There was a moment of silence in the summer-house. The cheerful tumult of the lawn-party was pleasantly audible from the distance. Outside, the hum of voices, the laughter of girls, the thump of the croquet-mallet against the ball. Inside, nothing but a woman forcing back the bitter tears of sorrow and shame--and a man who was tired of her. She roused herself. She was her mother’s daughter; and she had a spark of her mother’s spirit. Her life depended on the issue of that interview. It was useless--without father or brother to take her part--to lose the last chance of appealing to him. She dashed away the tears--time enough to cry, is time easily found in a woman’s existence--she dashed away the tears, and spoke to him again, more gently than she had spoken yet. “You have been three weeks, Geoffrey, at your brother Julius’s place, not ten miles from here; and you have never once ridden over to see me. You would not have come to-day, if I had not written to you to insist on it. Is that the treatment I have deserved?” She paused. There was no answer. “Do you hear me?” she asked, advancing and speaking in louder tones. He was still silent. It was not in human endurance to bear his contempt. The warning of a coming outbreak began to show itself in her face. He met it, beforehand, with an impenetrable front. Feeling nervous about the interview, while he was waiting in the rose-garden--now that he stood committed to it, he was in full possession of himself. He was composed enough to remember that he had not put his pipe in its case--composed enough to set that little matter right before other matters went any farther. He took the case out of one pocket, and the pipe out of another. “Go on,” he said, quietly. “I hear you.” She struck the pipe out of his hand at a blow. If she had had the strength she would have struck him down with it on the floor of the summer-house. “How dare you use me in this way?” she burst out, vehemently. “Your conduct is infamous. Defend it if you can!” He made no attempt to defend it. He looked, with an expression of genuine anxiety, at the fallen pipe. It was beautifully colored--it had cost him ten shillings. “I’ll pick up my pipe first,” he said. His face brightened pleasantly--he looked handsomer than ever--as he examined the precious object, and put it back in the case. “All right,” he said to himself. “She hasn’t broken it.” His attitude as he looked at her again, was the perfection of easy grace--the grace that attends on cultivated strength in a state of repose. “I put it to your own common-sense,” he said, in the most reasonable manner, “what’s the good of bullying me? You don’t want them to hear you, out on the lawn there--do you? You women are all alike. There’s no beating a little prudence into your heads, try how one may.” There he waited, expecting her to speak. She waited, on her side, and forced him to go on.