"We need not argue," she said. "You have told me nothing that I did not know before. Let me remind you that the mere formality which is still lacking to give you the legal right to take care of this woman is one that decent people still carefully adhere to, and without it your action to-night has been contrary to law and respectability. For this reason, no matter what your motive is, or how many private sitting-rooms you have been able to secure in this overcrowded house, I can and will protect the young woman from occupying one of them. I suppose it is hardly necessary to add that if you make the slightest attempt to see her to-night, or to interfere with her wishes in any way, I shall not hesitate to take the hotel officials and the police into my confidence. If you force me to action, you will find that I am a woman who is very well-known." During these words the man's face was a study. Fierce indignation, doubt, perplexity, intense disgust, each struggled for the ascendancy. But Mrs. Dunlap was about to leave the room. The necessity for propitiating her in some way forced itself upon him. "Wait!" he said imperatively. "You do not understand. Is it possible to make you understand the conditions? Sit down and let me explain just what has happened, and what I am trying to do." His manner became suddenly courteous, and he began to talk volubly, explaining, in more minute detail than the occasion seemed to call for, the devious ways by which he had reached this point; enlarging upon his deep affection for the lady of his choice, and his desire to free her from the narrow and cramped life in which he found her. Her mother was a commonplace, narrow-minded, exceedingly prejudiced person who entirely dominated her daughter's life; so that she was in danger of having no individuality, he said. Among other proofs of the mother's folly, she had conceived a violent dislike to himself; and carried her tyranny to such an extent that the girl was not even allowed to receive a call from him, unless the mother was present! Matters were in this state, and he was at an utter loss how to further the daughter's interests, when his good angel, came to his rescue. The girl went to spend a month with a very intimate friend, who had married and removed to a town a hundred miles from her home. Then, quite unexpectedly to himself, business connected with his firm sent him to that very town. All the rest had followed, almost, he might say, because of the necessities of the case. He had discovered that the young lady's affections were as deeply involved as his own, and that she despaired, as deeply as he did himself, of ever winning her narrow-minded mother to take their view of things.