r me, and his
desire to see me good and happy, to intervene with my father and the
Bishop, even at this late hour, and at the church door itself to stop
the ceremony.

It was late before I finished, and I thought the household was asleep,
but just as I was coming to an end I heard my father moving in the room
below, and then a sudden impulse came to me, and with a new thought I
went downstairs and knocked at his door.

"Who's there?" he cried. "Come in."

He was sitting in his shirt sleeves, shaving before a looking-glass
which was propped up against two ledgers. The lather on his upper lip
gave his face a fierce if rather grotesque expression.

"Oh, it's you," he said. "Sit down. Got to do this to-night--goodness
knows if I'll have time for it in the morning."

I took the seat in the ingle which Father Dan occupied on the night of
my birth. The fire had nearly burnt out.

"Thought you were in bed by this time. Guess I should have been in bed
myself but for this business. Look there"--he pointed with the handle of
his razor to the table littered with papers--"that's a bit of what I've
had to do for you. I kind o' think you ought to be grateful to your
father, my gel."

I told him he was very kind, and then, very nervously, said:

"But are you sure it's quite right, sir?"

Not catching my meaning he laughed.

"Right?" he said, holding the point of his nose aside between the tips
of his left thumb and first finger. "Guess it's about as right as law
and wax can make it."

"I don't mean that, sir. I mean. . . ."

"What?" he said, facing round.

Then trembling and stammering I told him. I did not love Lord Raa. Lord
Raa did not love me. Therefore I begged him for my sake, for his sake,
for everybody's sake (I think I said for my mother's sake also) to
postpone our marriage.

At first my father seemed unable to believe his own ears.

"Postpone? Now? After all this money spent? And everything signed and
sealed and witnessed!"

"Yes, if you please, sir, because. . . ."

I got no farther, for flinging down his razor my father rose in a
towering rage.

"Are you mad? Has somebody been putting the evil eye on you? The
greatest match this island has ever seen, and you say postpone--put it
off, stop it, that's what you mean. Do you want to make a fool of a man?
At the last moment, too. Just when there's nothing left but to go to the
High Bailiff and the Church! . . . But I see--I see what it is. It's
that you