With her face pale and drawn, her forehead puckered into painful furrows, her eyes red and sunken, her lips shrunken down at the corners, her head bent, her form bowed, her steps feeble, she went like a woman walking in her sleep, straight down the stairs, down the hall and through the front door to the piazza, where she found Col. Anglesea walking slowly up and down the floor and smoking. At her approach he threw away his cigar and turned to meet her, eager expectation on his face. She went and stood before him, and said, with a strange, cold steadiness: "Col. Anglesea, I have come to tell you that you may go to my father and ask his permission for you to marry me. You may also say to him, from me, that I hope he will give his consent, because--it will be a fiendish falsehood; but never mind that; you can tell it--because the marriage will secure my happiness." CHAPTER IX SUITOR AND FATHER When Odalite had signified her acceptance of the suit of Anglesea, although she had expressed herself in not too flattering language, the gallant colonel would have assumed the role of a favored lover and advanced to embrace her; but she lifted both hands and turned away her head with a look of repulsion calculated to cool the ardor of the warmest suitor, as she cried, sternly: "Stand back! Do not dare to lay a finger on me! I do not belong to you! I am not yet your property! You are not my owner! You have not received my father's permission to take possession of me! Go to him and tell him the falsehood you first suggested! Oh! how I hate you!" And pale and cold and hard as she always was in his presence, with a loathing that was too deep for flush of cheek or flash of eye, she turned and re-entered the house. He looked after her with a perfectly demoniacal expression of mingled longing and malignity, muttering: "Oh, very well, my lady! It is your day now! But it will be mine soon! And then I shall know how to reduce you to submission." He took another cigar from his pocket case, lighted it and recommenced his slow walk up and down the porch, smoking as before. So far his plan had succeeded. The mother's consent to his marriage with the heiress had been wrung from her through her fears for her husband. The daughter's consent had been wheedled from her through her love for her mother. These certainly seemed the most important steps toward ultimate triumph. But yet there remained the father's consent to be obtained. And this, which at first seemed of little moment, now grew into something of grave consideration. To be sure, he could easily go to Mr. Force and tell him that he loved his daughter, and that he wished to marry her; also that he had been so fortunate as to win such an interest in her heart as to make this marriage a matter in which her life's happiness was concerned. He could say all this and more, without troubling himself about its truthfulness; and so far, well.