‘For how long?’ he said with a smile. ‘I also should like to refuse you something for the pleasure of being persuaded to forswear myself. I think papa is right. I should hold out as long as you would put any faith in the delusion of my resistance.’ ‘It is no delusion,’ said Anne, shaking her head. ‘You must not think so. It is very serious. He has threatened me. There was no make-believe in his mind, Cosmo.’ ‘Threatened you? With what? Ah! so should I if I thought you were going to desert me.’ ‘You will not see how serious it is! I do not believe he will give in, Cosmo. He has threatened me that if I persevere he will leave everything he has to leave, away from me.’ ‘Away from you? But he has no power to do that,’ said the young man. ‘It is skilful of him to try your faithfulness--but he might have tried it by less conventional means.’ ‘Yes, he has the power,’ said Anne, neglecting the other part of this speech. ‘He has power over everything, except, indeed, the entail; and I believe he will do what he says. My father is not a man at all likely to try my faithfulness. He knows me, for one thing.’ ‘And knows you true as steel,’ said Cosmo, looking admiringly in her face and still quite unimpressed by the news. ‘Knows that I am not one to give way. He knows that very well. So here is something for your serious consideration. No, indeed, it is no joke. You must not laugh. We must face what is before us,’ said Anne, endeavouring to withdraw her hand and half offended by his unbelief. ‘I cannot face your frown,’ said Cosmo; ‘that is the only thing I am really afraid of. What! must it really be so stern as this? But these hard fathers, my darling, belong to the fifteenth century. You don’t mean to tell me that rebellious daughters are shut up in their rooms, and oaths insisted upon, and paternal curses uttered _now_!’ ‘I said nothing about being shut up in my room; but it is quite certain,’ said Anne, with a little heat, ‘that if I oppose him in this point my father will take all that ought to come to me and give it to Rose.’ ‘To Rose!’ a shade of dismay stole over Cosmo’s face. ‘But I thought,’ he said--showing an acquaintance with the circumstances which after, when she thought of it, surprised Anne--‘I thought your fortune came from your mother, not from Mr. Mountford at all.’ ‘And so it does; but it is all in his hands; my mother trusted in my father entirely, as she was of course quite right to do.’ ‘As it must have been the height of imprudence to permit her to do!’ cried Douglas, suddenly reddening with anger. ‘How could the trustees be such fools? So you, like the money, are entirely in Mr. Mountford’s hands?’ All at once the tone had ceased to be that of a lovers’ interview. Anne, startled and offended, this time succeeded in drawing her hand out of his. ‘Yes,’ she said, with a chill of surprise in her voice, ‘entirely in his hands.’