What passed between Mrs. Ridge and the discarded Clarence, it is needless to relate. Even Mrs. Ridge became convinced after a time that the rupture was both inevitable and irrevocable. Parker at last left the house, and it must be added took with him the ring which had been recovered from the floor. After he had gone Mrs. Ridge knocked at Milly's door. But an obstinate silence prevailed, and so she went away. Milly was sitting on her bed, tears dropping from her eyes, tears of rage and mortification and disappointment. She realized that she had failed, after all, in doing what she had set out to do, and angry as she still was, disgusted with Clarence's thin and parsimonious nature, she was beginning, nevertheless, to be conscious of her own folly. "I never liked him," she said to herself over and over, in justification for her rash act. "I couldn't bear him near me. I only did it for Dad's sake. And I could not, that's all there is to it--I just couldn't.... We should have fought all the time--cold, mean little thing." After a time she undressed and went to bed, calmer and more at peace with herself than for some time. The inevitable does that for us. "I can't live with a man I don't love--it isn't right," she thought, and gradually a glow of self-appreciation for her courage in refusing, even at the ninth hour, to make the woman's terrible sacrifice of her sacred self came to her rescue. Her sentimental education, with its woman's creed of the omnipotence of love, had reasserted itself. "I tried," she said in her heart, "but I couldn't--it wasn't the real, right thing." Of course she had known this all along, but she treated it now as a new discovery. And she went to sleep, sooner than one might expect under the circumstances. VI THE DEPTHS But the next day, as the French say, it was to pay. When Milly kissed her father at the breakfast table, his mournful eyes and drooping mouth showed plainly that he knew the disaster. "I couldn't, father," she murmured weepily. "It's all right, daughter," the little man responded bravely, fumbling with his fork and knife. But her grandmother did not mince matters. It was all well enough for a girl to have her own way as Milly had had hers, but now she had made a nice mess of things,--put them all in a ridiculous position. Who was she to be so particular, to consider herself such a queen? etc., etc. Milly took it all in silence. She knew that she deserved it in part. At last Horatio intervened. He didn't want his daughter to feel forced to marry a man she couldn't be happy with, not for all Danner's millions. Business was bad, to be sure, but he was a man yet and could find something to do to support his daughter. "I hope it ends all this society business for good," Mrs. Ridge put in with a hard little laugh. "If you don't want to marry, you can go to work." "I will," said Milly, humbly. "Don't be hard on her, mother," Horatio whispered into the old lady's ear. "It don't do no good now."