“Message! what message could I send her? I have been the most indulgent of fathers, and she deceives me. I have kept her as the apple of my eye, and she runs away from me to you. What does she know of you that she should put you before me?” cried the father, with sudden passion: and then he stopped again with that sense of the vanity and uselessness of all passion which comes natural to a man of the world. “Tell her I am glad she has taken no harm, and that I expect her to be at home at Fernwood when I return to-morrow,” he added, in his hardest, calmest voice: “good-night.” If there had been anybody there strict to interpret the bye-laws of the railway company, no doubt John Mitford would have suffered for it--for he made a spring into the train when it was fairly off, aided and abetted by a Fanshawe guard, who shouted “Here you are, sir!” in defiance of all by-laws. Mr Crediton went back to his house in Camelford, to the great amazement of the housekeeper, and sat half through the night thinking it over, trying to make the best of it. There was nothing further to be said. From the moment when Kate’s little note was delivered to him by the frightened Parsons before dinner, he had felt that the matter was settled and could not be reopened. “Papa, he has not given me up, and I will not give him up, and my heart is broken, and I am going to Mrs Mitford at Fanshawe,” was what Kate said. It had been supposed by Fred Huntley and himself that her failure at five o’clock was the result of her headache, or of a little perversity, and it was not till just before dinner that the note was found on her dressing-table. Mr Crediton sat at the foot of his table and made-believe to eat his dinner, and explained that Kate had a bad headache; and as soon as the ladies had left the table made some excuse of urgent business and hastened to Camelford. He had handed the note to Fred first, who received it after the first shock as became a man of the world. “I will stay and do what I can to amuse the people to-night,” he said, “and to-morrow morning I will go. Thanks for all you would have done for me. Perhaps we pressed her too hard at the last.”