oing into details. I only sent for you
to make such amends as I can--to apologise most humbly--to express my
sorrow--my shame--my unspeakable humiliation--that a child of mine--a
Pennycuick--a girl I thought was nothing if not maidenly and
self-respecting, and the very soul of honour and straightness and
proper pride--"

"You speak as if she was not all that now--"

"NOW!--and done a low, contemptible thing like that! Oh, I don't
understand it--I can't; it's too monstrous--except that I have her word
for it. She says she did it, and so there it is. And, sir, I beg your
pardon on behalf of the house that she has disgraced--the house that
reared her and thought her so different--"

He gulped, coughed, and gave Guthrie a chance to put in a word.

"Mr Pennycuick, the simple fact is that I made love to your daughter--"

"Made her an offer of marriage?" snarled the other, wheeling round.

"I kissed her--"

Mr Pennycuick snapped his thumb and finger derisively.

"THAT kind of kiss!--as good as asked for."

"It was not as good as asked for. Your daughter is not that kind of
woman."

"I thought not, but she says she is."

"Pay no heed to what she says. Her morbid conscientiousness runs away
with her. I tell you the plain truth, as man to man, without any
hysterics--I kissed her of my own free will--your daughter, sir. And I
am here now to stand by my act. If she will forgive my--my
tardiness--as you know, I was in no position then to aspire to marriage
with a lady of this family; I am not now, but I am better off than I
was--will you give your consent to our engagement?"

"No!" roared Mr Pennycuick, looking as if threatened with an apoplectic
fit. "I'll see her engaged to the devil first!"

Like Mary, he seemed to take the generous offer as a personal insult.
Guthrie Carey, conscious of doing the duty of a gentleman at enormous
cost, could not understand why.

CHAPTER XI.

Captain Carey, while leaving it to be understood that he held himself
engaged to Mary Pennycuick until further orders, realised the welcome
fact that in the meantime he was honourably free; and he excused
himself from staying to dinner. But scarcely had he driven off in his
hired buggy than that of Mr Goldsworthy clattered into the stableyard.
It was the good man's habit, when on his parochial visitations, to
'make' Redford at meal times, or at bed-time, whenever distances
allowed; he called it, most appropriately, his second home, a