n got as far as the door, and then he hesitated and
turned.

"There is just one way out of this for you, that I can see, Mr.
Worthington," he said. "It's a desperate measure, but it's worth thinking
about."

"What's that?"

It took some courage for Mr. Flint, to make the suggestion. "The 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