"Humph!" The response was so nearly in the manner of the earlier Ramsey, "the Ramsey he had begun with" and whom she remembered with horror, that she recognized the likeness. The further reply had been on her tongue's end, that to tell her father only that could not have taken long, or some such parrying nonsense; but now it would not come. She felt her whole nature tempted to make love's final approach steep and slippery, but again without looking she saw his face; his face of stone; his iron face with its large, quiet, formidable eyes that could burn with enterprise in great moments; a face set to all the world's realities, and eyes that offered them odds, asking none. So seeing she knew that if she answered with one least note of banter she would make herself an object of his magnanimity, than which she would almost rather fall under his scorn--if he ever stooped to scorn. Suddenly she remembered the deadlock and was smitten with the conviction that these exchanges were love's last farewell. Now it was hard to speak at all. "What was it you told him?" "I told him how long I'd loved you, and why." "We both love the river so," murmured Ramsey in a voice broken by the pounding of her heart. "Yes. I told him that, for one thing. And I told him how gladly I would have asked for you long ago had I not seen myself, as you so often saw me on the _Votaress_----" "Condemned to inaction," she softly prompted; for if this was farewell a true maiden must speed the parting. "Yes." "By an absolute deadlock," she murmured on. "My father sees it. He knows it's one yet and must always be one." "No, a lock but not a deadlock. It's a lock to which your brothers do not hold the key." The pounding in her breast, which had grown better, grew worse again. "Who holds it?" "Your father. I have just told him so. At no time would I have hesitated to ask for you if the key had been with your brothers. I would have got a settlement from them, sink or swim, alive or dead. I believe in lover's rights, Ramsey, and I'll have a lover's rights at any risk or cost that falls only on me. Those old threats--yes, I know how fiercely they are still meant--and they have always had their weight; but they've never of themselves weighed enough to stop me. I've held off and endured, waiting not for a change of heart in your brothers, but for an hour counselled, Ramsey, by my father on his dying bed." "What hour? Hour of strongest right? strongest reason?" "Not at all. The hour I've waited for was the one which would best enable me to meet your father on equal terms as measured by his own standards." "Oh, I see. I believe I see." "Yes, the hour when I should be not owner merely, but captain too, of the finest boat----" "Dat eveh float'--" she tenderly put in. "Yes, on this great river." "Oh, Captain Courteney----" "Don't Courteney or captain me now, Ramsey, whether this is beginning or end." There was a silence, and then--