Morris was that worst of sinners, a hypocrite.

Morris, being engaged to one woman, had taken advantage of her absence deliberately to involve the affections of another, or, at any rate, caused her considerable inconvenience.

He was wroth with Morris, and what was more, before he grew an hour older he would let him have a piece of his mind.
He found the sinner in his workshop, the chapel, making mathematical calculations, the very sight of which added to his father's indignation.
The man, he reflected to himself, who under these circumstances could indulge an abnormal talent for mathematics, especially on Sunday, must be a cold-blooded brute.

He entered the place slamming the door behind him; and Morris looking up noted with alarm, for he hated rows, that there was war in his eye.
"Won't you take a chair, father ?" he said.
"No, thank you; I would rather say what I have to say standing." "What is the matter ?" "The matter is, sir, that I find that by your attentions you have made that poor girl, Miss Fregelius, while she was a guest in my house, the object of slander and scandal to every ill-natured gossip in the three parishes." Morris's quiet, thoughtful eyes flashed in an ominous and unusual manner.
"If you were not my father," he said, "I should ask you to change your tone in speaking to me on such a subject; but as things are I suppose that I must submit to it, unless you choose otherwise." "The facts, Morris," answered his father, "justify any language that I can use." "Did you get these facts from Stephen Layard and Miss Layard?
Ah! I guessed as much.

Well, the story is a lie; I was merely arranging her hood which she could not do herself, as the wind forced her to use her hand to hold her dress down." The thought of his own ingenuity in hitting on the right solution of the story mollified the Colonel not a little.
"Pshaw," he said, "I knew that.