"Mr. Sawyer is a gentleman and he couldn't resent it at the time in the presence of a lady." "He has had time enough since," she said with scorn. Mrs. McElwin came from the window and sat down near her husband. The banker looked hard at his daughter, and a sudden tangling of the lines on his face showed that the first words that flew to the verge of utterance had been suppressed, and that he was determined to be calm. "He has had time, but he has also had consideration," said McElwin. "To resent an insult is sometimes more of a scandal than to let it pass. He hesitated to involve your name." He was now so quiet, so plausible in his gentleness that the young woman felt ashamed of the quick spirit she had shown. "Sit down," he said, and she obeyed, with her hands lying listlessly together in her lap. "Your mother and I know what is best for you," he said. A slight shudder seemed to pass through the wife's dignified shoulders. "You have always been the object of our most tender solicitude," he went on. "And if I have been determined, it has been for your own ultimate good. I admit that there is not much romance about Mr. Sawyer. He is a keen, open-eyed, practical business man, with money out at interest, and with money lying in my bank. His family is excellent. His father was, for many years, the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, and his grandfather was a judge. And I believe as firmly as I ever believed anything, that he will be a very rich man. He is constantly widening out and will not confine himself to the buying and selling of mules. His judgment of the markets is fine, and I repeat that he will be a very rich man. In looking over the field I don't know another man I would rather have associated with me." His wife, long since convinced by his practical logic, looked up with a quiet smile of approval. The girl sat weaving her fingers together. She met her father's questioning eye and did not waver. "I don't presume to question what you say," she said. "But I am no longer a spoiled child to be petted and persuaded. I am a woman and have begun to think. This marriage, though brought about in so ridiculous a way, has had a wonderful effect upon me. I have heard that marriage merges a woman's identity with that of her husband, but this marriage has made an individual of me. It has freed me from frivolous company; it has given me something that I once thought I could not endure--solitude--and I have found it delightful. The hard and stubborn things that were beat into my head at school, and which I despised at the time, are useful pieces of knowledge now, and, viewing them, I wonder that I could ever have been so silly as to find my greatest pleasure in flattery."