“Papa, you know the trouble he was in then, half mad with all the strangeness of misfortune. Gervase, let me speak! There is advice that is impossible; if you tell us to separate, to give each other up--I speak for myself--that is impossible. Advise us how we are to live, how it is to be done. I will never believe,” cried Madeline, with tears in her eyes, keeping back her lover with the pressure of her imperative hand, “that you are not our best and only friend. Tell us how to do it, and not merely that we are not to do it; any stranger could do that. But you are our best and only friend----” This is not the usual kind of appeal to an obdurate father; but obdurate fathers are not consistent perhaps with daughters who have counted all the costs, and in the last resort are aware that they themselves are free agents, not bound more than reason and affection dictate. Mr Thursley made still a faint attempt to brave it out, to adopt the tone of centuries past, to denounce the youth and threaten the girl; but it was only a faint attempt. The look which Madeline fixed upon him, regretful not for herself but for him, grieved by the violence which, her serious eyes said, diminished her respect for her father, without disturbing her resolution, was too much for Mr Thursley. And he knew very well, to begin with, that some mode of arranging matters must be found; that no violence on his part could induce his daughter to abandon her purpose, which takes the heart out of resistance. He came at last to the terms, which he had vaguely settled in his own mind from the beginning, which were that Gervase should enter his own office, and work there, abandoning all his follies, and betaking himself to a business life. This was his ultimatum. “It is of no use telling me,” he said, “that you have no turn for business, for nobody could have managed better with that West Indian affair; and let me tell you, my boy, there is no character in the world more honourable than that of an English merchant--whatever false ideas you may have got into your head.” “I think so too, Gervase,” said Madeline in a whisper, with once more a pressure of his hand. “I will make one concession,” said the triumphant father, now feeling that the positions were reversed, and that he had attained his fit supremacy. “If you should find yourself in a position to settle £10,000 on Madeline, I will withdraw my opposition; if not, the office and a wife, or your freedom without her. That’s my last word--and I don’t think one father in a hundred would say as much. It is to take or to leave.”