Their intercourse was impersonal, but not hostile. Hazlitt bore interruption calmly, and though she could not allow him to say that Lita resembled him in temperament, she contradicted him without insult. They came nearest to a disagreement over the question as to whether it was or was not a good rule that club employes should not be allowed to give information as to the whereabouts of the members. "Are all the members' lives so full of secrets?" she asked, and she made the word "secrets" sound very sly. Fortunately at that moment the doorbell rang, and Lita and Dacer entered. "Where have you been?" asked her father angrily. "Dining with Doctor Dacer," answered Lita. "He and I are engaged." "Nonsense!" said Mrs. Hazlitt. "My daughter is not old enough to know her own mind," said Hazlitt to Dacer. "I know it all right," said Lita. "Of course," said Dacer temperately, "we understand that we could not be married for some time, but we wanted you to know--" "Oh, that's what young people always say to begin with," Mrs. Hazlitt answered; "but the first thing you know they are sending out their wedding invitations." Lita and Dacer looked a trifle silly. This had been exactly their idea--to get consent to a long, long engagement, and then by the summer to start a campaign for an early marriage. Mr. Hazlitt rose and stood on the hearth rug--as if it were his own. "You two young people realize," he remarked, "that I have never seen or heard of Doctor Dacer before, and that so far he has caused me nothing but anxiety." "The whole thing has just been a web of deceit," said Mrs. Hazlitt. "Until I know a little more about him, and until Lita is a year or so older and more mature, I should not be willing even to discuss an engagement, and I'm sure my wife agrees with me." All four noticed that he had used the word without qualification, and all four successfully ignored the fact. Indeed anyone entering the room at that moment and seeing Mr. Hazlitt, so commanding on the hearth rug, and Mrs. Hazlitt in a chair beside the fire, looking up at him and nodding her head at the end of every sentence, would have supposed them a married couple entering upon middle age without a thought of disagreement. The discussion followed good orthodox lines. The older people, Olympian above their distress, granted that in a year or so if all went well an engagement might be discussed; but at present none existed. The young people, really calm, knew that nothing but their own wills could change the fact that they were engaged at that moment. When Dacer had gone home and Lita had gone to bed her parents outlined their campaign. Delay without definite commitment was the idea--it always is. In the meantime Hazlitt would have the young man thoroughly looked up. Mrs. Hazlitt wagged her head despondently. "I'm afraid there's nothing really against him. Doctor Burroughs wouldn't have an assistant with anything actually criminal in his record."