While awaiting this encounter Mr. Pope had not been insensitive to the tactical and scenic possibilities of the occasion. In fact, he had spent the latter half of the morning in intermittent preparations, arranging desks, books, hassocks in advantageous positions, and not even neglecting such small details as the stamp tray, the articles of interest from Jerusalem, and the rock-crystal cenotaph, which he had exhibited in such a manner as was most calculated to damp, chill and subjugate an antagonist in the exposed area towards the window. He had also arranged the chairs in a highly favourable pattern. Mr. Trafford was greatly taken aback by Mr. Pope's juridical manner and by this form of address, and he was further put out by Mr. Pope saying with a regal gesture to the best illuminated and most isolated chair: "Be seated, sir." Mr. Trafford's exordium vanished from his mind, he was at a loss for words until spurred to speech by Mr. Pope's almost truculent: "Well?" "I am in love sir, with your daughter." "I am not aware of it," said Mr. Pope, and lifted and dropped the paper-weight. "My daughter, sir, is engaged to marry Mr. Magnet. If you had approached me in a proper fashion before presuming to attempt--to attempt----" His voice thickened with indignation,--"Liberties with her, you would have been duly informed of her position--and everyone would have been saved"--he lifted the paper-weight. "Everything that has happened." (Bump.) Mr. Trafford had to adjust himself to the unexpected elements in this encounter. "Oh!" he said. "Yes," said Mr. Pope, and there was a distinct interval. "Is your daughter in love with Mr. Magnet?" asked Mr. Trafford in an almost colloquial tone. Mr. Pope smiled gravely. "I presume so, sir." "She never gave me that impression, anyhow," said the young man. "It was neither her duty to give nor yours to receive that impression," said Mr. Pope. Again Mr. Trafford was at a loss. "Have you come here, sir, merely to bandy words?" asked Mr. Pope, drumming with ten fingers on the table. Mr. Trafford thrust his hands into his pockets and assumed a fictitious pose of ease. He had never found any one in his life before quite so provocative of colloquialism as Mr. Pope. "Look here, sir, this is all very well," he began, "but why can't I fall in love with your daughter? I'm a Doctor of Science and all that sort of thing. I've a perfectly decent outlook. My father was rather a swell in his science. I'm an entirely decent and respectable person." "I beg to differ," said Mr. Pope. "But I am." "Again," said Mr. Pope, with great patience, and a slight forward bowing of the head, "I beg to differ." "Well--differ. But all the same----"