He had a natural desire to make it tally with Madame M; auunster's account of Clifford's disaffection; but his ingenuity, finding itself unequal to the task, resolved at last to ask help of the young man's candor.
He waited till he saw him going away, and then he went out and overtook him in the grounds.
"I wish very much you would answer me a question," Acton said.
"What were you doing, last night, at Madame Munster's?"
Clifford began to laugh and to blush, by no means like a young man with a romantic secret. "What did she tell you?" he asked.
"That is exactly what I don't want to say."
"Well, I want to tell you the same," said Clifford; "and unless I know it perhaps I can't."
They had stopped in a garden path; Acton looked hard at his rosy young kinsman. "She said she could n't fancy what had got into you; you appeared to have taken a violent dislike to her."
Clifford stared, looking a little alarmed. "Oh, come," he growled, "you don't mean that!"
"And that when--for common civility's sake--you came occasionally to the house you left her alone and spent your time in Felix's studio, under pretext of looking at his sketches."
"Oh, come!" growled Clifford, again.
"Did you ever know me to tell an untruth?"
"Yes, lots of them!" said Clifford, seeing an opening, out of the discussion, for his sarcastic powers.
"Well," he presently added, "I thought you were my father."