girl's
a good girl, well educated, and by no means bad looking. Bob might do a
thousand times worse. Give your consent to the marriage, and Jethro Bass
will go back to Coniston."

It was wisdom such as few lords get from their seneschals, but Isaac D.
Worthington did not so recognize it. His anger rose and took away his
breath as he listened to it.

"I will never give my consent to it, never--do you hear?--never. Send
that note!" he cried.

Mr. Flint walked out, sent the note, and returned and took his place
silently at his own table. He was a man of concentration, and he put his
mind on the arguments he was composing to certain political leaders. Mr.
Worthington merely pretended to work as he waited for the answer to come
back. And presently, when it did come back, he tore it open and read
it with an expression not often on his lips. He flung the paper at Mr.
Flint.

"Read that," he said.

This is what Mr. Flint read: "Miss Wetherell begs to inform Mr. Isaac D.
Worthington that she can have no communication or intercourse with him
whatsoever."

Mr. Flint handed it back without a word. His opinion of the
school-teacher had risen mightily, but he did not say so. Mr.
Worthington took the note, too, without a word. Speech was beyond him,
and he crushed the paper as fiercely as he would have liked to have
crushed Cynthia, had she been in his hands.

One accomplishment which Cynthia had learned at Miss Sadler's school was
to write a letter in the third person, Miss Sadler holding that there
were occasions when it was beneath a lady's dignity to write a direct
note. And Cynthia, sitting at her little desk in the schoolhouse during
her recess, had deemed this one of the occasions. She could not bring
herself to write, "My dear Mr. Worthington." Her anger, when the note
had been handed to her, was for the moment so great that she could not
go on with her classes; but she had controlled it, and compelled Silas
to stand in the entry until recess, when she sat with her pen in her
hand until that happy notion of the third person occurred to her.
And after Silas had gone she sat still; though trembling a little at
intervals, picturing with some satisfaction Mr. Worthington's appearance
when he received her answer. Her instinct told her that he had received
his son's letter, and that he had sent for her to insult her. By sending
for her, indeed, he had insulted her irrevocably, and that is why she
trembled.

Poor Cynthia!