The Captain found himself brought to a sudden stop in his unconscious paraphrase of Signor Capulet's menace to his recalcitrant daughter, Juliet. With what threat could the noble Horatio terrify his daughter to obedience? Before you talk of turning your rebellious child out of doors, you must provide a home from which to cast her. Captain Paget remembered this, and was for the moment reduced to sudden and ignominious silence. And yet there must surely be some way of bringing this besotted young woman to reason. He sat for some minutes in silence, with his head leaning on his hand, his face hidden from Diana. This silence, this attitude, so expressive of utter despondency, touched her more keenly than his anger. She knew that he was mean and selfish, that it was of his own loss he thought; and yet she pitied him. He was old and helpless and miserable; so much the more pitiable because of his selfishness and meanness. For the heroic soul there is always some comfort; but for the grovelling nature suffering knows no counterbalance. The ills that flesh is heir to seem utterly bitter when there is no grand spirit to dominate the flesh, and soar triumphant above the regions of earthly pain. Captain Paget's mind, to him, was not a kingdom. He could not look declining years of poverty in the face; he was tired of work. The schemes and trickeries of his life were becoming very odious to him; they were for the most part worn out, and had ceased to pay. Of course he had great hopes, in any event, from Gustave Lenoble; but those hopes were dependent on Gustave's inheritance of John Haygarth's estate. He wanted something more tangible than this--he wanted immediate security; and his daughter's marriage with Gustave would have given him that security, and still grander hopes for the future. He had fancied himself reigning over the vassals of Cotenoir, a far more important personage than the real master of that chateau. He had pictured to himself a _pied-a-terre_ in Paris which it might be agreeable for him to secure, for existence in Normandy might occasionally prove _ennuyeux_. These things were what he meant when he talked of a haven for his declining years; and against the daughter who, for some caprice of her own, could hinder his possession of these things, he had no feeling but anger. Diana compassionated this weak old man, to whose lips the cup of prosperity had seemed so near, from whose lips her hand had thrust it. He had been promised a home, comfort, respectability, friendship--"all that should accompany old age"--and she had prevented the fulfilment of the promise. Heaven knows how pure her motives had been; but as she watched that drooping head, with its silvered hair, she felt that she had been cruel.