The dinner was eaten in grim silence, and after the dinner Michel, still grimly silent, sat with his friend on the bench before the door and smoked a cigar. While he was smoking, Michel said never a word. But he was thinking of the difficulty he had to overcome; and he was thinking also, at odd moments, whether his own son George was not, after all, a better sort of lover for a young woman than this young man who was seated by his side. But it never occurred to him that he might find a solution of the difficulty by encouraging this second idea. Urmand, during this time, was telling himself that it behoved him to be a man, and that his sitting there in silence was hardly proof of his manliness. He knew that he was being ill-treated, and that he must do something to redress his own wrongs, if he only knew how to do it. He was quite determined that he would not be a coward; that he would stand up for his own rights. But if a young woman won't marry a man, a man can't make her do so, either by scolding her, or by fighting any of her friends. In this case the young lady's friends were all on his side. But the weight of that half hour of silence and of Michel's gloom was intolerable to him. At last he got up and declared he would go and see an old woman who would have linen to sell. 'As I am here, I might as well do a stroke of work,' he said, striving to be jocose. 'Do,' said Michel; 'and in the mean time I will see Marie Bromar.' Whenever Michel Voss was heard to call his niece Marie Bromar, using the two names, it was understood, by all who heard him about the hotel, that he was not in a good humour. As soon as Urmand was gone, he rose slowly from his seat, and with heavy steps he went up-stairs in search of the refractory girl. He went straight to her own bedroom, and there he found her still sitting on her bedside. She jumped up as soon as he was in the room, and running up to him, took him by the arm. 'Uncle Michel,' she said, 'pray, pray be good to me. Pray, spare me!' 'I am good to you,' he said. 'I try to be good to you.' 'You know that I love you. Do you not know that I love you?' Then she paused, but he made no answer to her. He was surer of nothing in the world than he was of her affection; but it did not suit him to acknowledge it at that moment. 'I would do anything for you that I could do, Uncle Michel; but pray do not ask me to do this?' Then she clasped him tightly, and hung upon him, and put up her face to be kissed. But he would not kiss her. 'Ah,' said she; 'you mean to be hard to me. Then I must go; then I must go; then I must go.' 'That is nonsense, Marie. You cannot go, till you go to your husband. Where would you go to?' 'It matters not where I go to now.'