"Not without telling you--afterward. I couldn't undertake more than
that."

"H'm!" he ejaculated, before passing out. "Then I must take active
measures."

It was easier, however, to talk about active measures than to devise
them. While Dorothea was sobbing, with her elbows on the dining-room
table, and her face buried in her hands, he was pacing his room in
search of desperate remedies. It was a case in which his mind turned
instinctively to Diane for help; but in the very act of doing so he was
confronted by her theories as to Dorothea's need of diplomatic guidance.
For that, he told himself, the time was past. The event had proved how
impotent mere "management" was to control her, and justified his own
preference for force.

Before she went to bed that night Dorothea was summoned to her father's
presence, to receive the commands which should regulate her conduct
toward "the young man Wappinger." They could have been summed up in the
statement that she must know him no more. She was not only never to see
him, or write to him, or communicate with him, by direct or indirect
means; as far as he could command it, she was not to think of him, or
remember his name. His measures grew more drastic in proportion as he
gave them utterance, until he himself become aware that they would be
difficult to fulfil.

"I will not attempt to extract a promise from you," he was prudent
enough to say, in conclusion, "that you will carry out my wishes,
because I know you would never bring on me the unhappiness that would
spring from disobedience."

"It's hardly fair, father, to say that," she replied, firmly. "In war,
no one should shrink from--the misfortunes of war."

"That means, then, that you defy me?"

She was calmer than he as she made her reply.

"It doesn't mean that I defy you. I love you too much to put either you
or myself in such an odious position as that. But it does mean that one
day, sooner or later, I shall marry--Mr. Wappinger."

He looked at her with a bitter smile.

"I admire your frankness, Dorothea," he said, after a brief pause, "and
I shall do my best to imitate it. If it's to be war, we shall at least
fight in the open. I know what you intend to do, and you know that I
mean to circumvent you. The position on both sides being so pleasantly
clear, you may come and kiss me good-night."

During the process of the stiff little embrace that followed it was as
difficult for her not to fling herself sobbing