said rebelliously.

"How? Like a man. Or like a woman. How do you suppose Miss Pasmer's
bearing it? Do you suppose she's got some friend to help her?"

"If she's broken it, she doesn't need any one," urged Minnie.

"Well," said Eunice, with her high scorn of Dan unabated, "I never could
have liked that girl, but I certainly begin to respect her. I think I
could have got on with her--now that it's no use. I declare," she broke
off, "we're sitting here sweltering to death! What are we keeping our
things on for?" She began to tear hers violently off and to fling them
on chairs, scolding, and laughing at the same time with Minnie, at their
absent-mindedness.

A heavy step sounded on the verandah without.

"There's father!" she cried vividly, jumping to her feet and running to
the door, while Minnie, in a nervous bewilderment, ran off upstairs to
her room. Eunice flung the door open. "Well, father, we've got Dan back
again." And at a look of quiet question in his eye she hurried on: "His
engagement's broken, and he's come up here to tell us, and brought Mr.
Boardman along to help."

"Where is he?" asked the father, with his ruminant quiet, pulling off
first one sleeve of his overcoat, and pausing for Eunice's answer before
he pulled off the other.

XLVI.

"He's up in his room, resting from the effort." She laughed nervously,
and her father made no comment. He took off his articles, and then went
creaking upstairs to Dan's room. But at the door he paused, with his
hand on the knob, and turned away to his own room without entering.

Dan must have heard him; in a few minutes he came to him.

"Well, Dan," said his father, shaking hands.

"I suppose Eunice has told you? Well, I want to tell you why it
happened."

There was something in his father that always steadied Dan and kept him
to the point. He now put the whole case fairly and squarely, and his
candour and openness seemed to him to react and characterise his conduct
throughout. He did not realise that this was not so till his father
said at the close, with mild justice, "You were to blame for letting the
thing run on so at loose ends."

"Yes, of course," said Dan, seeing that he was. "But there was no
intention of deceiving any one of bad faith--"

"Of course not."

"I thought it could be easily arranged whenever it came to the point."

"If you'd been older, you wouldn't have thought that. You had women to
deal with on both sides. But if it's all