"But, Hugh, I can't. If I were Libby Jaynes, it's possible I could; but as it is--" And in the end he came round to my point of view. That is to say, he appreciated my unwillingness to reward Mrs. Rossiter's kindness to me by creating a scandal, and he was not without some admiration for what he called my "magnanimity toward his old man" in hesitating to drive him to extremes. And yet it was Hugh himself who drove him to extremes, over questions which I hardly raised. That was some ten days later, when Hugh refused point-blank to sail on the steamer his father had selected to take him on the way to Strath-na-Cloid. I was, of course, not present at the interview, but having heard of it from Hugh, and got his account corroborated by Ethel Rossiter, I can describe it much as it took place. I may say here, perhaps, that I still remained with Mrs. Rossiter. My marching orders, expected from hour to hour, didn't come. Mrs. Rossiter herself explained this delay to me some four days after that scene in the breakfast loggia which had left me in a state of curiosity and suspense. "Father seems to think that if he insisted on your leaving it would make Hugh's asking you to marry him too much a matter of importance." "And doesn't he himself consider it a matter of importance?" Mrs. Rossiter patted a tress of her brown hair into place. "No, I don't think he does." Perhaps nothing from the beginning had made me more inwardly indignant than the simplicity of this reply. I had imagined him raging against me in his heart and forming deep, dark plans to destroy me. "It would be a matter of importance to most people," I said, trying not to betray my feeling of offense. "Most people aren't father," Mrs. Rossiter contented herself with replying, still occupied with her tress of hair. It was the confidential hour of the morning in her big chintzy room. The maid having departed, I had been answering notes and was still sitting at the desk. It was the first time she had broached the subject in the four days which had been to me a period of so much restlessness. Wondering at this detachment, I had the boldness to question her. "Doesn't it seem important to you?" She threw me a glance over her shoulder, turning back to the mirror at once. "What have I got to do with it? It's father's affair--and Hugh's." "And mine, too, I suppose?" I hazarded, interrogatively.