“No!” said Mr. Gibson, with a slight twinkle in his eye and a curl on his lips, but unnoticed by the indignant Mr. Coxe. “I believe I was once considered tolerably good-looking, and I daresay I was as great a coxcomb as any one at twenty; but I don’t think that even then I should quite have believed that all those pretty compliments were addressed to myself.”

“It was not the conduct of a gentleman, sir,” repeated Mr. Coxe, stammering over his words—he was going on to say something more, when Mr. Gibson broke in—

“And let me tell you, young man,” replied Mr. Gibson, with a sudden sternness in his voice, “that what you have done is only excusable in consideration of your youth and extreme ignorance of what are considered the laws of domestic honour. I receive you into my house as a member of the family—you induced one of my servants—corrupting her with a bribe, I have no doubt”——

“Indeed, sir! I never gave her a penny.”

“Then you ought to have done. You should always pay those who do your dirty work.”

“Just now, sir, you called it corrupting with a bribe,” muttered Mr. Coxe.

Mr. Gibson took no notice of this speech, but went on— “Inducing one of my servants to risk her place, without offering her the slightest equivalent, by begging her to convey a letter clandestinely to my daughter—a mere child.”

“Miss Gibson, sir, is nearly seventeen! I heard you say so only the other day,” said Mr. Coxe, aged twenty. Again Mr. Gibson ignored the remark.

“A letter which you were unwilling to have seen by her father, who had tacitly trusted to your honour, by receiving you as an inmate of his house. Your father’s son—I know Major Coxe well—ought to have come to me, and have said out openly, ‘Mr. Gibson, I love—or I fancy that I love— your daughter; I do not think it right to conceal this from you, although unable to earn a penny; and with no prospect of an unassisted livelihood, even for myself, for several years, I shall not say a word about my feelings—or fancied feelings —to the very young lady herself.’ That is what your father’s son ought to have said; if, indeed, a couple of grains of reticent silence wouldn’t have been better still.”

“And if I had said it, sir—perhaps I ought to have said it,” said Mr. Coxe, in a hurry of anxiety, “what would have been your answer? Would you have sanctioned my passion, sir?”

“I would have said, most probably—I will not be certain of my exact words in a suppositional case—that you were a young fool, but not a dishonourable young fool; and I should have told you not to let your thoughts run upon a calf-love until you had magnified it into a passion. And I daresay, to make up for the mortification I should have given you, I might have prescribed your joining the Hollingford Cricket Club, and set you at liberty, as often as I could, on the Saturday afternoons. As it is, I must write to your father’s agent in London, and ask him to remove you out of my household, repaying the premium, of course, which will enable you to start afresh in some other doctor’s surgery.”

“It will so grieve my father,” said Mr. Coxe, startled into dismay, if not repentance.

“I see no other course open. It will give Major Coxe some trouble (I shall take care that he is at no extra expense); but what I think will grieve him the most is the betrayal of confidence; for I trusted you, Edward, like a son of my own!” There was something in Mr. Gibson’s voice when he spoke seriously, especially when he referred to any feeling of his own—he who so rarely betrayed what was passing in his heart—that was irresistible to most people: the change from joking and sarcasm to tender gravity.

Mr. Coxe hung his head a little, and meditated.

“I do love Miss Gibson,” said he, at length. “Who could help it?”