“Nonsense, young gentleman. To _marry_ would be the ruin of your lives! Listen to me, sir. You and Em. are both too young to know yourselves, or to know life. Of course, you think now that if you could marry you would be perfectly happy. And so you might be for a few short weeks, while the novelty lasted. But you are a gentleman—she a poor man’s child. You have been differently brought up; these differences would crop out in course of time. You might repent of your marriage, think you could have done so much better if you could have married a lady of your own class, and so on——” “Believe me, sir——” began the suitor. “Stop! hear me out,” said the father. “You might even come to despise my child, and to make her feel that she was despised. That would break her heart, and then—why, I might break your head!” Ronald Bruce sprang to his feet and began to stride up and down the room in a sort of frenzy. “What in the deuce do you take me for, Mr. Palmer,” he indignantly exclaimed, “that you should think me capable of such baseness! Or what do you take your daughter for, that you should deem it even possible that any man should ever ‘despise’ her! If you were not her father, I would not stand quietly to hear her maiden dignity so affronted!” “You’re not standing so very quietly just at the present speaking, young gentleman, unless tearing up and down the room like a madman means your idea of standing quietly! Come, Mr. Bruce! Come, Mr. Bruce! You have no better friend on earth than I am. And the very friendliest thing I could do for you would be to put my foot down on the notion of you marrying my daughter. And what’s more, no girl ever had a lovinger father than Em. has in me, and the kindest thing I can do for her is to prevent her from becoming your wife.” “I swear by all my hopes of salvation that I will make Emolyn Palmer my wife in the face of all the world and in defiance of all opposition!” exclaimed the young man, so transported with fury that he lost all self-command and sense of propriety. “Now I wonder why I don’t lift him by the scruff of his neck and the slack of his pants and pitch him out of the window?” thought John Palmer to himself. “Why? Because, with all his impudence, he loves my Em., poor fellow, almost as hard as I did her mother, and I am sorry for him. So I’ll be gentle with him.” “You have no right,” broke forth the young man once more, as he strode up and down the floor—“you have no right—no one has any right to separate two young people who love each other as I and Emolyn do! No right to ruin both our lives for the sake of gratifying your own particular whims of pride or prudence! I told my uncle and my mother so yesterday, and I tell you so to-day.” “Whe-ew!” exclaimed John. “So you mean to marry my daughter whether I will or not?” “I will marry my Emolyn in defiance of all insane opposition!” “Very well. We’ll see. Please sit down here. I am going to send for Emolyn,” said John Palmer.