She got into her night-dress, brushed her hair, even said her prayers--the self-same prayers in the identical words she had said by her bedside in Queen Anne Street on the night of the New Year's party, long ago; she had not even left her father's name out of her petitions--debating these things. She slept in a tiny bedroom through Mrs. Day's, and when she got up from her knees she took her candle and went into her mother's room. "I will hear what mama has to say about it," she told herself. Mrs. Day was lying awake in the darkness, thinking of Bernard and the dangers of India. "Mama," Deleah said, holding the candle aloft to peer at her mother. Its light fell on her own charming face half hidden in the loose waves of curling black hair. "You aren't asleep, are you? Of course you aren't! I believe you lie there all night, staring into the shadows and thinking of miserable things! I wonder if it would really make things better, if you would like it very much, that she also has made up her mind to marry Mr. Gibbon!" Deleah stared for a minute, and then she laughed; and Mrs. Day saw that she laughed whole-heartedly. "Bessie takes all my young men!" she said. "You see, mama, with the best will in the world to please you, I can't get married; so there's an end of it; and I may as well go to bed." "Come and kiss me, dear." Mrs. Day put a detaining arm round the girl's shoulders. "Nothing of this makes you unhappy, Deleah?" "It only makes me want to laugh," Deleah said. CHAPTER XXIII Deleah Has No Dignity A day or so after her encounter with the local magnate in the principal street of Brockenham, Deleah found herself, to her extreme surprise, on her way to the Hope Brewery, in response to a letter from Sir Francis Forcus, asking her to call on him there on a matter of business. He had named the afternoon hour in which she was released from school. "I sent for you, because I wished to see you alone, and I thought it might be difficult to do so at your own house," Sir Francis said. His address was more formal, his appearance more formidable than ever, she thought, as he indicated the chair in which he wished her to sit, and took his own seat, entrenched behind his writing-table, at some distance from her. "I hope it is not objectionable to you to come to me here, my own house being so far away?" Deleah shyly, but quite honestly, said that she did not mind in the least. "He is going to tell me that, after all, he has decided to buy Bernard off," she told herself, but was not allowed to maintain that illusion long. "I have a word or two I wished to say to you about my young brother, Reginald," he said, plunging into his subject. He sat, his face a little averted from her, looking down at the papers on his desk, and spoke in a tone as cold and non-committal as if he read what he had to say to her, written there.