the floor with a violence
that made her nephew start, then turned upon him a countenance
inflamed with righteous anger.

"It is only three days ago since I gave you fully my view of the
situation," she remarked, "you were good enough at the time to admit
that it was a remarkably well-balanced one. I should be glad if you
will explain in what manner your position could have changed in the
space of just three hours after, to lead you to rush back to your
island, really as if you were a mole or a wild Indian, or some other
strange animal that could not bear civilised society, without even so
much as a good-bye to me, or to your cousins either? What is
that?--you say you wrote--oh, ay--you wrote--to Molly as well as to
me; rigmaroles, my dear nephew, mere absurd statements that have not a
grain of truth in them, that do not hold water for an instant. You are
not made for the world forsooth, nor the world for you! and if that is
not flying in the face of your Creator, and wanting to know better
than Providence!--And then you say, 'you cast a gloom by your mere
presence.' Fiddle-de-dee! It was not much in the way of gloom that
Molly brought back with her from her three days' visit to you--or if
that is gloom--well, the more your presence casts of it the
better--that is all I can say. Ah, but you should have seen her, poor
child, after you went away in that heartless manner and you had
removed yourself and your shadow, and your precious gloom--if you
could have seen how unhappy she has been!"

"Good God!" exclaimed the man with a paling face, "what are you
saying?"

"Only the truth, sir--Molly is breaking her heart because of your base
desertion of her."

"Good God," muttered Adrian again, rose up stiffly in a sort of
horrified astonishment and then sat down again and passed his hand
over his forehead like a man striving to awaken from a painful dream.

"Oh, Adrian, don't be more of a fool than you can possibly help!"
cried his relative, exasperated beyond all expression by his
inarticulate distress. "You are so busy contemplating all sorts of
absurdities miles away that I verily believe you cannot see an inch
beyond your nose. My gracious! what is there to be so astonished at?
How did you behave to the poor innocent from the very instant she
crossed your threshold? Fact is, you have been a regular gay Lothario.
Did you not"--cried Tanty, starting again upon her fine vein of
metaphor--"did you not deliberately hold the