He looked upon them only as irritating insolence on her part.

A few minutes later, however, they became full of significance.
Sir George seemed to have forgotten the Stanley marriage and the burning of the contract in his quarrel with Dorothy over her unknown lover.
Conceive, if you can, the situation in Haddon Hall at that time.

There was love-drunk Dorothy, proud of the skill which had enabled her to outwit her wrathful father.

There was Sir George, whose mental condition, inflamed by constant drinking, bordered on frenzy because he felt that his child, whom he had so tenderly loved from the day of her birth, had disgraced herself with a low-born wretch whom she refused to name.

And there, under the same roof, lived the man who was the root and source of all the trouble.