suspiciousness. "He really seems to have supplanted ME as he has poor
Kearney in your estimation."

"Now, father," said Jessie, suddenly seizing him by the shoulders in
affected indignation, but really to conceal a certain embarrassment
that sprang quite as much from her sister's quietly observant eye as her
father's speech, "you promised to let this ridiculous discussion drop.
You will make me and Christie so nervous that we will not dare to
open the door to a visitor, until he declares his innocence of any
matrimonial intentions. You don't want to give color to the gossip that
agreement with your views about the improvements is necessary to getting
on with us."

"Who dares talk such rubbish?" said Carr, reddening; "is that the kind
of gossip that Fairfax brings here?"

"Hardly, when it's known that he don't quite agree with you, and DOES
come here. That's the best denial of the gossip."

Christie, who had of late loftily ignored these discussions, waited
until her father had taken his departure.

"Then that is the reason why you still see Mr. Munroe, after what you
said," she remarked quietly to Jessie.

Jessie, who would have liked to escape with her father, was obliged to
pause on the threshold of the door, with a pretty assumption of blank
forgetfulness in her blue eyes and lifted eyebrows.

"Said what? when?" she asked vacantly.