"Well, darling," he said, "you've given me a shock. These affairs aren't settled quite in that way, you know." She looked up at him with a smile and a flush. "I was so happy," she said, "that I forgot all about that. But I came when you wanted me, Daddy." Yes, it was going to be very difficult. But he must not allow his tenderness to take charge of him, though he could use it to soften the breaking of his decision to her. "Why didn't he write to me?" he said. "He did," she said. "Didn't you get his letter?" "I haven't had it yet. If he wrote, I shall get it to-morrow, forwarded from Abington. He ought not to have asked you to engage yourself to him without asking my permission first." "Well, you see, darling, it seemed to come about naturally. I suppose everybody was expecting it,--everybody but me, that is," she laughed gently--"and when it did come, of course everybody knew. He said he must write to you at once. He did think of coming down at once to see you, but I didn't want him to. Still, when your second telegram came, he said you'd expect it of him; so he's coming down to-night, to see you to-morrow." Lassigny, then, seemed to have acted with correctness. But that he should have done so did not remove any objection to him as a husband for Beatrix. It only made it rather more difficult to meet him; for Beatrix's father would not be upheld by justifiable annoyance at having been treated with disrespect. "I'm glad he didn't come down with you," he said. "I wanted him to," she said simply. "But he wouldn't. He said you might not like it. He _is_ such a dear, Daddy. He thinks of everything. I do love him." She got up and stood over him and kissed him. "I love you too, darling," she said, "more than ever. It makes you love everybody you do love more, when this happens to you." He couldn't face it, with his arm round her, and her soft cheek resting confidently against his. He couldn't break up her happiness and her trust there and then. Better see the fellow first. By some miracle he might show himself worthy of her. His dislike of him for the moment was in abeyance. It rested on nothing that he knew of him--only on what he had divined. "Well," he said; "we'd better go to bed and think it all over. I'll see him to-morrow." "He's coming here about twelve," she said, releasing herself as he stood up. "If you are in the City I can tell him to go down and see you at the Bank." "No," he said, "I will see him here. And I don't want you to see him before I do, B. We've got to begin it all over again, in the proper way. That's why I made you come here." His slight change of tone caused her to look up at him. "You're not going to ask him to wait for me, are you, darling?" she asked. "We do want to get married soon. We do love each other awfully." He kissed her. "Run along to bed," he said. "I'll tell you what I have decided when I've seen him to-morrow."