"Let me go and see Cynthia," he said again. "It's a funny thing a girl like that hasn't ever had a good offer--upon my soul it is!" "You ask home such twopenny-halfpenny men," retorted his wife. "She is in her room; I'll let her know you're here." Cynthia _was_ "cut up." She liked Humphrey Kent very much--and everything is relative: she felt herself to be a Juliet. She considered it very unkind of mamma to oppose their marriage, and said as much to her father, with tears on her lashes and pathetic little sobs. Sam Walford was sorry for her; his affection for his children was his best attribute. He said "Damn it!" several times more. And then he patted her on the cheek, and told her not to cry, and went out on the Plage to commune with tobacco. After his cigar, he sought a coiffeur--there is a very excellent one in Dieppe; and he was shaved, an operation that freshened him extremely; and he had his thin hair anointed with various liquids of agreeable fragrance and most attractive hues, and submitted his moustache to the curling-irons. The French barber will play with one for hours, and when Mr. Walford had acquired a carnation for his buttonhole, and sipped a vermouth over the pages of _Gil Blas_ it was time to think of returning to the hotel. A pretty woman, who had looked so demure in approaching that the impropriety was a sensation, lifted her eyes to him and smiled as she passed. He momentarily hesitated, but remembered that it was near the dinner-hour, and that he was a father with a daughter's love-affair upon his hands. But he re-entered the hotel in a good humour. Cynthia went to bed radiantly happy that night, and kissed a bundle of lilies that had cost fifty francs, for the Capulets had relented. The two men had had a long conversation on the terrace over their coffee, and the senior, who was favourably impressed, had ended by being jovial and calling Kent "my boy," and smacking him on the shoulder. Mrs. Walford was not displeased by the decision, since it could never be said that she had advocated it. "My daughter's fiancé, Mr. Kent, the novelist, you know," sounded very well, and she foresaw herself expatiating on his importance, and determined what his income should be in her confidences to intimate friends. Really, if the house were nice, he might be making anything she liked--who could dispute her assertions?