"I've got something to say to you, something serious." "Father," said the girl, looking him full in the face, pale to the lips, but very firm, "I don't think you're in a state to talk seriously of anything." "O, you don't, don't you, Miss Impudence?
You think I'm drunk, perhaps.
You'll find that, drunk or sober, I've only one mind about you, and that I mean to be obeyed.

Sit down, I tell you.

I'm not in the humour to stand any nonsense to-night.

Sit down." Ellen obeyed this mandate, uttered with a fierceness unusual even in Mr.
Carley, who was never a soft-spoken man.

She seated herself quietly on the opposite side of the hearth, while her father took down his pipe from the chimney-piece, and slowly filled it, with hands that trembled a little over the accustomed task.
When he had lighted the pipe, and smoked about half-a-dozen whiffs with a great assumption of coolness, he addressed himself to his daughter in an altered and conciliating tone.
"Well, Nelly," he said, "you've had a rare day at Wyncomb, and a regular ramble over the old house with Steph's cousin.