"But not you," he added, trying to be stern. "You must not write. You must not entangle yourself farther. I want to make inquiries. I must have time in this matter. I will not be hurried. You must not consider yourself engaged, Lillie. I cannot allow it." "Oh, you _will_ inquire, papa?" implored the girl, confident that Carter's character would come unharmed out of the furnace of investigation. "Yes, yes. But give me time. This is too important, too solemn a matter to be hurried over. I will see. I will decide hereafter. There. Now you must go to sleep. Good night, my darling." "Good night, dear papa," she murmured, with the sigh of a tired child. "Forgive me." It was near morning before either of them slept; and both came to the breakfast table with pale, wearied faces. There were dark circles around Lillie's eyes, and her head ached so that she could hardly hold it up, but still she put on a piteous, propitiating smile. She hoped and feared unreasonable things every time that her father spoke or seemed to her to be about to speak. She thought he might say that he had given up all his opposition; and in the same breath she dreaded lest he might declare that it must be all over forever. But the conversation of the evening was not resumed, and the meal passed in absorbed, anxious, embarrassing silence, neither being able to talk on any subject but the one which filled their thoughts. An hour later Lillie suddenly fled from the parlor to her own room. She had seen Carter approaching the house; she felt certain that he came to demand her of her father; and at such an interview she could not have been present, she thought, without dying. The mere thought of it as she sat by her window, looking out without seeing anything, made her breath come so painfully that she wondered whether her lungs were not affected, and whether she were not destined to die early. Her fatigue, and still more her troubles, made her babyish, like an invalid. After half an hour had passed she heard the outer door close upon the visitor, and could not resist the temptation of peeping out to see him, if it were only his back. He was looking, with those handsome and audacious eyes of his straight at her window. With a sudden throb of alarm, or shame, or some other womanish emotion, she hid herself behind the curtain, only to look out again when he had disappeared, and to grieve lest she had given him offence. After a while her father called her, and she went down trembling to the parlor. "I have seen him," said the Doctor. "I told him what I told you. I told him that I must wait,--that I wanted time for reflection. I gave him to understand that it must not be considered an engagement. At the same time I allowed him to write to you. God forgive me if I have done wrong. God pity us both."