‘Your father could not come if he wished it. Your letter has made him so ill that he is not fit to leave home. I dread what the effects of the shock may be on him. Remember, he is no longer a young man, sixty-two on his last birthday, and you have robbed him of all he had in life.’ ‘I don’t see that,’ replied Jenny, with her old pertness, ‘I must have married some day; I don’t suppose my father meant to keep me single all my life, and in such a matter, people are generally left to choose for themselves.’ ‘Not when their choice is in direct opposition to their parents’ wishes! However, you have elected to fly in their faces, and what’s done can’t be undone. I visited the Earl’s Court Registrar’s Office this morning, and found the ill news was, indeed, too true. It, therefore, now only remains to be seen what remedy there is for so sad a state of affairs, and if you are prepared to hear the proposal your father has sent you by me.’ He had made as though he were about to throw himself on the grass beside her, and, in order to avoid his doing so, Jenny rose and moved a few paces forward. Henry Hindes had, therefore, no alternative but to walk slowly by her side, and as she had turned her face from the town, each step took them further from it. ‘If you have anything unpleasant to tell me,’ she said, with a slight laugh, ‘for goodness’ sake don’t make it public property. Let us go further up the cliffs, where our voices will not reach any loiterers on the beach below.’ ‘You can hardly expect my message to be a very pleasant one, Jenny,’ commenced Henry Hindes, as composedly as he knew how, ‘but it is soon told. Mr Crampton refuses either to write to or see you, unless you agree to his conditions. When he received your terrible news this morning, I was afraid he would have a fit, it affected him so dreadfully. As for your poor mother and aunt, they are, I hear, in utter despair. You have changed a happy home, Jenny, into a house of mourning.’ ‘Well, they should have been more considerate of my feelings,’ said the girl, in a low voice, but Mr Hindes could detect signs of softening in it. ‘They were considerate of them, they intended to be considerate of them,’ exclaimed Henry Hindes, ‘they only told you the truth when they said that Walcheren was not a fit man for you to marry, that he was a gambler and an evil liver--that--’ ‘Mr Hindes, you forget yourself,’ cried the girl with newly acquired dignity, ‘when you said those things the other day, you were speaking of an acquaintance, to-day you are maligning _my husband_!’ ‘I cannot help it! Were he twenty times your husband, I must say what is in my mind concerning him. You have had your own way too long, Jenny, and now you have taken it to your ruin. But your father is willing to receive you back as his daughter, on one condition, and that is, that you leave this man who has led you into so grievous an error, and return to the protection of your parents.’