Now he found fault with every one, so that even Joseph dared hardly open his mouth, and said he must give warning.

The day after his arrival, having spent the morning with Angus walking over certain fields, much desired, he knew, of a neighbouring proprietor, inwardly calculating the utmost he could venture to ask for them with a chance of selling, he scolded Ginevra severely on his return because she had not had lunch, but had waited for him; whereas a little reflection might have shown him she dared not take it without him.

Naturally, therefore, she could not now eat, because of a certain sensation in her throat.

The instant he saw she was not eating, he ordered her out of the room: he would have no such airs in his family! By the end of the week--he arrived on the Tuesday--such a sense of estrangement possessed Ginevra, that she would turn on the stair and run up again, if she heard her father's voice below.

Her aversion to meeting him, he became aware of, and felt relieved in regard to the wrong he was doing his wife, by reflecting upon her daughter's behaviour towards him; for he had a strong constitutional sense of what was fair, and a conscience disobeyed becomes a cancer.
In this evil mood he received from some one--all his life Donal believed it was Fergus--a hint concerning the relations between his daughter and his tenant's herd-boy.