"Misplaced. You had better let me pass on. I have, as you say, steeled myself. I will not condescend to any tenderness. In my brother's presence and my sister's I will wish you good-bye and express a hope that you may be successful in your enterprises. Here, by the brook-side, out upon the mountain-path, where there is no one to hear us but our two selves, I will bid you no farewell softer than that already spoken. Go and do as you propose. You have my leave. When it shall have been done there shall never be a word spoken by me against it. But, when you ask me whether you are right, I will only say that I think you to be wrong. It may be that you owe nothing to me; but you owe something to her, and something also to yourself. Now, Mr. Houston, I shall be glad to pass on." He shrugged his shoulders and then stepped out of the path, thinking as he did so how ignorant he had been, after all that had passed, of much of the character of Imogene Docimer. It could not be, he had thought, but that she would melt into softness at last. "I will not condescend to any tenderness," she had said, and it seemed that she would be as good as her word. He then walked down before her in silence, and in silence they reached the inn. "Mr. Houston," said Mrs. Docimer, before they sat down to dinner together, "I thought it was understood that you and Imogene should not go out alone together again." "I have taken my place to Innspruck by the diligence this evening," he answered. "Perhaps it will be better so, though both Mudbury and I will be sorry to lose your company." "Yes, Mrs. Docimer, I have taken my place. Your sister seemed to think that there would be great danger if I waited till to-morrow morning when I could have got a pleasant lift in a return carriage. I hate travelling at night and I hate diligences. I was quite prepared to post all the way, though it would have ruined me,--only for this accursed diligence." "I am sorry you should be inconvenienced." "It does not signify. What a man without a wife may suffer in that way never does signify. It's just fourteen hours. You wouldn't like Docimer to come with me." "That's nonsense. You needn't go the whole way unless you like. You could sleep at Brunecken." "Brunecken is only twelve miles, and it might be dangerous." "Of course you choose to turn everything into ridicule." "Better that than tears, Mrs. Docimer. What's the good of crying? I can't make myself an elder son. I can't endow Imogene with a hundred thousand pounds. She told me just now that I might earn my bread, but she knows that I can't. It's very sad. But what can be got by being melancholy?" "At any rate you had better be away from her." "I am going,--this evening. Shall I walk on, half a stage, at once, without any dinner? I wish you had heard the kind of things she said to me. You would not have thought that I had gone to walk with her for my own pleasure." "Have you not deserved them?"