soreness and misery in the old man's heart--misery at his own acts and
words, and at the outrage he was doing to his own conscience--turned his
judgment bitter, and with that bitterness his son's heart shut tight
against him.

"But boy and girl!" sneered the man. "A couple of blind puppies, I would
say rather--you with your falcons and mare and your other toys, and the
down on your chin, and your conscience; and she with her white face and
her mother and her linen-parlour and her beads"--(his charity prevailed
so far as to hinder him from more outspoken contempt)--"And you two
babes have been prattling of conscience and prayers together--I make no
doubt, and thinking yourselves Cecilies and Laurences and all the holy
martyrs--and all this without a by-your-leave, I dare wager, from parent
or father, and thinking yourselves man and wife; and you fondling her,
and she too modest to be fondled, and--"

The plain truth struck him with sudden splendour, at least sufficiently
strong to furnish him with a question.

"And have you told Mistress Marjorie about your sad rogue of a father?"

Robin, white with anger, held his lips grimly together and the wrath
blazed in an instant up from the scornful old heart, whose very love was
turned to gall.

"Tell me, sir--I will have it!" he cried.

Robin looked at him with such hard fury in his eyes that for a moment
the man winced. Then he recovered himself, and again his anger rose to
the brim.