, I should imagine that the fact that I have objections
would have its weight with you."

"Naturally; and yet you would neither force me into what I didn't like
to do, nor refuse me what I wanted."

With this definition of his parental attitude Dorothea pushed back her
chair and moved sedately from the room.

Physically, Derek was able to go on with his breakfast and finish it,
but mentally he was like a man, accustomed to action, who suddenly finds
himself paralyzed. To the best of his knowledge he had never before been
put in a position in which he had no idea whatever as to what to do. He
had been placed in some puzzling dilemmas in private life, and had
passed through some serious crises in financial affairs, but he had
always been able to take some course, even if it was a mistaken one. It
had been reserved for Dorothea to checkmate him in such a way that he
could not move at all.

* * * * *

That the feminine mind possessed resources which his own did not was a
claim Derek had made it a principle to deny. The theory on which he had
brought up Dorothea had been based on his belief in his own insight into
his daughter's character. Though he was far from abjuring that
confidence even yet, nevertheless, when the succeeding days brought no
enlightenment of counsel, and the long journey to South America became
more imminent, he was forced once more to turn his steps toward Gramercy
Park, and seek inspiration from the great, eternal mother-spirit of
mankind, as represented by his cousin.

Miss Lucilla van Tromp passed among her friends as a sort of diffident
Minerva. Though deficient in outward charms, she was considered to
possess intellectual ability; and, having once been told that her
profile resembled George Eliot's, she made the pursuit of learning,
music, and Knickerbocker genealogy her special aims. Derek had, all his
life, felt for her a special tenderness; and having neither mother,
wife, nor sister, he was in the habit of coming to her with his cares.

"You're a woman," he declared, now, in summing up his case. "You're a
woman. If you'd been married, you would probably have had children. You
ought to be able to tell me exactly what to do."

Flushes of shy rapture illumined and softened her ill-assorted features
on being cited as the type of maternity and sex, so that when she
replied it was with an air of authority.

"I can tell you what to do, Derek; but I've done it a