"If I answered that in the affirmative," said Hester, "would it not be much the same as acknowledging myself already engaged?" "No! no!" cried the major vehemently. "So long as your word is not passed you remain free. The two are as far asunder as the pole from the equator. I thank God you are not engaged to him!" "But why?" asked Hester, with a pang of something like dread. "Why should you be so anxious about it?" "Has he never said he loved you?" asked the major eagerly. "No," said Hester hurriedly. She felt instinctively it was best to answer directly where there was no reason for silence. What he might be wrong to ask she was not therefore wrong to answer. But her _No_ trembled a little, for the doubt came with it, whether though literally, it was strictly true. "We are friends," she added. "We trust each other a good deal." "Trust him with nothing, least of all your heart, my dear," said the major earnestly. "Or if you must trust him, trust him with anything, with everything, except that. He is not worthy of you." "Do you say so to flatter me or to disparage him?" "Entirely to disparage him. I never flatter." "You did not surely bring me out, major Marvel, to hear evil of one of my best friends?" said Hester, now angry. "I certainly did--if the truth be evil--but only for your sake. The man I do not feel interest enough in to abuse even. He is a nobody." "That only proves you do not know him: you would not speak so if you did," said Hester, widening the space between her and the major, and ready to choke with what in utterance took such gentle form. "I am confident I should have worse to say if I knew him better. It is you who do not know him. It astonishes me that sensible people like your father and mother should let a fellow like that come prowling after you!" "Major Marvel, if you are going to abuse my father and mother as well as lord Gartley,--" cried Hester, but he interrupted her. "Ah, there it is!" exclaimed he bitterly. "Lord Gartley!--I have no business to interfere--no more than your gardener or coachman! but to think of an angel like you in the arms of a----" "Major Marvel!" --"I beg ten thousand pardons, cousin Hester! but I am so damnably in earnest I can't pick and choose my phrases. Believe me the man is not worthy of you." "What have you got against him?--I do hate backbiting! As his friend I ask you what you have against him." "That's the pity of it! I can't tell you anything very bad of him. But a man of whom no one has anything good to say--one of whom never a warm word is uttered--" "I have called him my friend!" said Hester. "That's the worst of it! If it were not for that he might go to the devil for me!--I daresay you think it a fine thing he should have stuck to business so long!