Meanwhile she took the trouble to have ready a good supper for Don Joaquin, and made rather a special toilette in which to help him to it. Sarella was not in the least afraid of him, and had no great dread of a row which concerned someone else. Don Joaquin was not, however, particularly mollified by the becoming dress, nor by finding his betrothed sitting up for him, as she was sitting up with Gore. "Where's Mariquita?" he asked, as he sat down to eat. "In bed long ago. I hope you'll like that chicken; it's done in a special way we have, and the recipe's my patent. I haven't taught it to Mariquita." "Why aren't _you_ in bed?" "Because I preferred waiting to see you safe at home," Sarella replied with an entrancing smile. "Was Mr. Gore anxious too?" Don Joaquin demanded sarcastically. "It is not a quarter of an hour later than my usual time for going to bed," Gore answered. "And I thought it better to see you; you would, I believe, have _expected_ to see me." "Very well. You have done as you said?" "Yes." Gore glanced at Sarella, and Don Joaquin told her that she had now better sit up no longer. "_I_ think I had," she told him; "I know all about it." "Is it all settled?" Don Joaquin asked, looking at Gore. "Have you fixed it up?" Gore found this abruptness and haste made his task very difficult. He had to consider how to form his reply. "He proposed to Mariquita," Sarella cut in, "but she refused him." "Refused him!" Don Joaquin almost shouted. "Unfortunately, it is so," Gore was beginning, but his host interrupted him. "I do not choose she should refuse," he said angrily. "I will tell her so before you see her in the morning." Gore was angry himself, and rose from his seat. "No," he said; "I will not agree to that. She knows her own mind, and it will not change. You must not persecute her on my account." "It is not on your account. I choose to have duty and obedience from my own daughter." "Joaquin," said Sarella (Gore had never before heard her call him by his Christian name), "it is no use taking it that way. Mariquita is not undutiful, and you must know it. But she will not marry Mr. Gore--or anybody." "Of course she will marry," cried the poor girl's father fiercely. "That is the duty of every girl." Sarella slightly smiled. "Then many girls do not do their duty," she said, in her even, unimpassioned tones. Her elderly _fiance_ was about to burst into another explosion, but she would not let him. "Many Catholic girls," she reminded him, "remain unmarried." "To be nuns--that is different." "It is my belief," she observed in a detached manner, as if indulging in a mere surmise, "that Mariquita will be a nun." "Mariquita! Has she said so?" he demanded sharply. "Not to me," Sarella replied, quite unconcernedly. "Nor to me," Gore explained; "nevertheless, I believe it will be so." "That depends on _me_," the girl's father asserted with an unpleasant mixture of annoyance and obstinacy. "I intend her to marry."