He stood, large, genial, and rosy, in front of his fire. “Well, young man, what are you descending upon us at this hour for? Why couldn’t you come to lunch?” “I wanted to speak to you seriously about something. I wanted to see you alone.” “Well, here I am. Sit down. Have a cigar.” Trenchard saw that Philip was nervous, and he liked him the better for that. “He’s a nice young fellow, nice and clean and healthy—not too cocksure either, although he’s clever.” Philip, on his part, felt, at this moment, a desperate determination to make all the Trenchard family love him. They _must_.... They MUST. His heart was bursting with charity, with fine illusions, with self-deprecation, with Trenchard exultation. He carried the flaming banner of one who loves and knows that he is loved in return. He looked round upon George Trenchard’s book-cases and thought that there could, surely, be nothing finer than writing critical books about early Nineteenth Century Literature. “I love Katherine,” he said, sitting on the very edge of his arm-chair. “And she loves me. We want to be married.” George Trenchard stared at him. “Well, I’m damned!” he said at last, “you’ve got some cheek!” His first impression was one of a strange illumination around and about Katherine, as though his daughter had been standing before him in the dark and then had suddenly been surrounded with blazing candles. Although he had, as has been said, already considered the possibility of Katherine’s marriage, he had never considered the possibility of her caring for someone outside the family. That struck him, really, as amazing. That made him regard his daughter, for a moment, as someone quite new and strange. He burst into laughter. “It’s ridiculous!” he said. “Why! you two have scarcely seen one another!” Philip blushed, but looked up into Trenchard’s face with eyes that were strangely pleading for a man who could, at other times, be so firmly authoritative. “I know that it must seem so to you,” he said. “But really we _have_ met a good deal. I knew from the very beginning.... I’ll make her happy,” he ended, almost defiantly, as though he were challenging some unseen enemy. “Well, state your case,” said Trenchard. “I love her,” he stammered a little, then his voice cleared and he stared straight before him at Trenchard’s velvet waistcoat. “Of course there’ve been people in my life before, but I’ve never felt anything like this. I should like to tell you that my life is absolutely free from any entanglements—of any kind. I’m thirty and as fit as a fiddle. My share in the business and some other things come to about fifteen hundred a year. It’s all very decently invested, but, of course, I’d show you all that. I’m not bad about managing those things, although you mightn’t think so. I want to buy a little place somewhere in England and settle down—a little place with a bit of land. I do think I could make Katherine happy—I’d devote myself to that.”