It was past eleven when Everard left Elm Park after his interview with Beatrice, and nearly half-past when he reached home, expecting to find the house dark, and the family in bed. But as he walked slowly up the avenue, he saw a light in his father’s room, and the figure of a man walking back and forth, as if impatient of something. “Can it be he is waiting for me?” he thought, and a sigh escaped him as he felt how unequal he was to a conflict with his father that night. Entering the hall as noiselessly as possible he groped his way up stairs to the broad landing, when the darkness was suddenly broken by a flood of light which poured from Rossie’s room, and Rossie herself appeared in the door, holding her gray flannel dressing-gown together with one hand, and with the other shedding her hair back from her face, which looked tired and sleepy, as she said: “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come. Your father wants to see you, and asked me to sit up and tell you when you came. Good-night!” and she stepped back into her room, while he passed slowly down the hall, and she saw him knock at his father’s room at the far end of the passage. “Well, my son, so you’ve come at last,” the judge said to him, but there was no anger in his voice, only a slight tone of irritation that he had been kept up so late. “You have been to see Bee, I take it, and, from the length of time you staid, conclude that you settled the little matter we were talking about this morning.” “Yes, father, we settled it,” Everard said, but his voice was not the voice of a hopeful, happy lover, and his father looked suspiciously at him as he continued: “With what result?” “Beatrice refused me;” and Everard’s voice was still lower and more hopeless. “Refused you! ’Tis false! You never asked her!” the judge exclaimed, growing angry at once. “Father!” and now Everard looked straight in his sire’s face, “do you mean to say I lie, and I your son and mother’s?” The judge knew that in times past Everard had been guilty of almost everything a fast young man ever is guilty of, but he had never detected him in a falsehood, and he was obliged to answer him now: “No, not exactly _lie_, though I don’t understand why she should refuse you. If I know anything about girls she is not averse to you, and here you come and tell me that she refused you flat. There’s some trick somewhere; something I do not understand. Beatrice likes you well enough to marry you, and you know it. Why then did she refuse you, unless you made a bungle of the whole thing, and showed her you were not more than half in earnest, as upon my soul I believe you are not; but you shall be. I’ve had my mind on that marriage for years, and I will not easily give it up. Do you hear or care for what I am saying?” he asked, in a voice growing each instant louder and more excited.