Alpha Book

Joseph Parkinson.
It may conservatively be stated that everyone was surprised.
Old Stapylton had half risen, with a purple face.
The colonel viewed him with a look of bland interrogation.
There was silence for a heart-beat.
Then Stapylton lowered his eyes, if just because the laws of caste had
triumphed, and in consequence his glance crossed that of his daughter,
who sat motionless regarding him. She was an unusually pretty girl, he
thought, and he had always been inordinately proud of her. It was not
pride she seemed to beg him muster now. Patricia through that moment was
not the fine daughter the old man was sometimes half afraid of. She was,
too, like a certain defiant person--oh, of an incredible beauty, such
as women had not any longer!--who had hastily put aside her bonnet and
had looked at a young Roger Stapylton in much this fashion very long
ago, because the minister was coming downstairs, and they would
presently be man and wife,--provided always her pursuing brothers did
not arrive in time.


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