with inexpressible dignity and
authority,--Flavia heard him rise,--"this will be repaid by the One to
Whom you lend through the poor--repaid to you, and to your daughter."

There was a moment's pause.

"You might include my son in that; I've got one, you know," suggested
Thomas Rose, carefully casual.

Flavia covered her eyes, and the tears trickled through her slender
fingers.

When the moon was up and the pant of a distant motor announced that the
guest was being conveyed to the village by Lenoir and the big
automobile, Flavia went in to her father. Both of them maintained their
usual composure, as they smiled at one another across the room, but the
young girl's extreme pallor was not to be disguised when she came into
the light. Mr. Rose looked at her, and continued to look.

"You're not well, my girl," he asserted, concerned. "Never mind drawing
that curtain; come over here. Don't you think it's time to tell me why
you sent off Gerard? I know how hard it must have hit him, when he was
down already, and I've felt sorry often enough, but a man has to take a
woman's answer and I've said nothing. But I believed at home that you
liked him, and I believe you have been fretting ever since."

Flavia grasped the heavy curtain, gazing at him in an utter confusion of
thought that amounted to actual giddiness.

"I--I sent away Mr. Gerard?" she marvelled.

"Who else? Or if you accepted him, why was I not told?"

"Will you tell me what you mean?" she asked brokenly.

"Mean? I mean that the last time I saw Allan Gerard alone, on the day I
met you and Corrie driving home together, he asked my permission to
propose to you. I rather guess that hour with him didn't make me very
easy on Corrie, although I was given no cause to be otherwise by Gerard.
Gerard said frankly that he wouldn't have offered you such a wreck as he
felt himself, much as he loved you, if he had not gone so far before he
was hurt that he had no right to leave in silence. He said that as a
matter of honorable justice he must lay the decision before you and
abide by your will. Very quiet, he was--I told him that I would rather
give you to him than to any other man on earth, and I meant it."

The room blurred before Flavia's dilated eyes.

"You never told me! Papa, you never told me!"

The passionate cry of grief brought Mr. Rose to his feet.

"Told you? Gerard was to tell you. I wanted to carry him home with me
that afternoon, but he refused. In fac