Mary tried to gain command of herself. “I had rather not,” she said faintly. “I don’t think I can.” “I fear—you must,” Miss Sibson rejoined, with unusual gravity. “Still, there is no hurry. He can wait a few minutes. He can await your leisure. Do you sit down and compose yourself. You have no reason to be disturbed. The gentleman”—she continued, with an odd inflection in her voice—“is old enough to be your father.” XV MR. PYBUS’S OFFER “A note for you, sir.” Vaughan turned moodily to take it. It was the morning after the Vermuyden dinner, and he had slept ill, he had risen late, he was still sitting before his breakfast, toying with it rather than eating it. His first feeling on leaving the dining-room had been bitter chagrin at the ease with which Sir Robert had dealt with him. This had given place a little later to amusement; for he had a sense of humour. And he had laughed, though sorely, at the figure he had cut as he beat his retreat. Still later, as he lay, excited and wakeful, he had fallen a prey to doubt; that horrible three o’clock in the morning doubt, which defies reason, which sees all the _cons_ in the strongest light and reduces the _pros_ to shadows. However, one thing was certain. He had crossed the Rubicon. He had divorced himself by public act from the party to which his forbears—for the Vaughans as well as the Vermuydens had been Tories—had belonged. He had joined the Whigs; nay, he had joined the Reformers. But though he had done this deliberately and from conviction, though his reason approved the step, and his brain teemed with arguments in its favour, the chance that he might be wrong haunted him.