“I am bearing it in mind, father. The talk has nothing to do with me. I do not wish to know even whether it is false or true, at any rate at present. True or false, there will be an end of it now, as the girl is going away. I hope that I have made myself clear. I understand that, for reasons of your own, you are very anxious that I should marry Sir Henry Graves, should it come in my way to do so; and I know that his family desire this also, because it would be a road out of their money difficulties. What Sir Henry wishes himself I do not know, nor can I say what I wish. But I think that if I stood alone, and had only myself to consider, I should never see him again. Still I say, let it remain open, although I decline to bind myself to anything definite. And now I must really go and dress.” “I do not know that I am much ‘for’arder,’ after all, as Samuel Rock says,” thought Mr. Levinger, looking after her. “Oh, Joan Haste! you have a deal to answer for.” Then he also went to dress. The two interviews in which Emma had taken part this afternoon—that with Joan and that with her father—had, as it were, unsealed her eyes and opened her ears. Now she saw the significance of many a hint of Ellen’s and her father’s which hitherto had conveyed no meaning to her, and now she understood what it was that occasioned the forced manner which had struck her as curious in Henry’s bearing towards herself, even when he had seemed most at his ease and pleased with her. Doubtless the knowledge that he was expected to marry a particular girl, in order that by so doing he might release debts to the amount of fifty thousand pounds, was calculated to cause the manner of any man towards that girl to become harsh and suspicious, and even to lead him to regard her with dislike. This was why he had been forced to leave the Service, for this reason “his family had desired his presence,” and the opening in life, the only one that remained to him, to which he had alluded so bitterly, but significantly enough avoided specifying, was to marry a girl with fortune, to marry her—Emma Levinger.