"I swam out and stayed by her," he said, laconically, "till the boat came. It kept upsetting in the breakers." "Why didn't her father go out? It was a queer thing to let you risk your life." "He could not swim, and he was paralysed with fright." Justin lowered his eyes, for there was a mist on his glasses. Ah, that meeting between father and daughter when the boat came in! He had turned aside quickly from it, but not quickly enough to escape the expression in the eyes of the half-fainting man as he held out his arms to his recovered daughter. "Did you make up your mind then to marry her?" pursued his mother, in a voice so harsh that it was almost a croak. "No; I had already done so." "You were pretty quick about it." "I am not always slow." "And she jumped at the chance." "Not exactly," and, throwing back his head, he stared at her through his glasses. "If you will recall some of your own experiences when in love, you may remember some of the ways of your sex." The obstinate face opposite him did not relax. No; although she had twice been wooed and successfully won, his mother had never felt in the slightest degree the influence of the gentle passion. She had not the remotest conception of the strength of a loving attachment except as she had felt it to a limited extent in the guise of maternal affection. However, she was not going to tell her son this, so she said, commandingly, "Go on with your story." "There isn't much more to tell. The experience in the sea had given her a shock, and she was pale and quiet for a day or two, then she was all right and was about with her father all the time, and I--of course I was there." He stopped in a somewhat lame fashion, and Mrs. Prymmer said, scornfully, "I guess her father made the match." Justin maintained a discreet silence. It would be sacrilege to relate to this unsympathetic listener the history of the steady, sharp oversight that the father had taken in all matters pertaining to his daughter. Justin would not tell her that Mr. Lancaster had spoken first,--that one day he had turned to him with an abrupt, "You love my daughter, don't you?" Mrs. Prymmer would only sneer if she should be told that her son's voice had trembled as he had answered, "Yes," and that his cheek had burned under the glance of Mr. Lancaster's keen eyes. Nor would he favour her with an account of his love-making to the spoiled and wayward Derrice. It would not inspire his mother with the same intensity of interest with which it had inspired her son. Therefore he remained thoughtful until she broke the silence by an accusation that goaded him into a response. "You promised your father when he died that you would take care of me." "I know I did. I have married the only woman I have ever seen who would not be jealous of a mother's appropriation of a son."