My object being to get a second version of the story Hugh had told me, I succeeded. Mrs. Rossiter's facts were practically the same as her brother's, only viewed from a different angle. As she presented the case Hugh had been merely preposterous, dashing his head against a stone wall, with nothing he could gain by the exercise. "The idea of his saying he'll not go to the Goldboroughs for the twelfth! Of course he'll go. Since father means him to do it, he will." I was addressing an envelope, and went on with my task. "But I thought you said he'd left home?" "Oh, well, he'll come back." "But suppose he doesn't? Suppose he goes to work?" "Pff! The idea! He won't keep that up long." I was glad to be sitting with my back to her. To disguise the quaver in my voice I licked the flap of the envelope as I said: "But he'll have to if he means to support a wife." "Support a wife? What nonsense! Father means him to marry Cissie Boscobel, as I've told you already--and he'll fix them up with a good income." "But apparently Hugh doesn't see things that way. He's told me--" "Oh, he'd tell you anything." "He's told me," I persisted, boldly, "that he--he loves me; and he's made me say that--that I love him." "And that's where you're so foolish, dear Miss Adare. You let him take you in. It isn't that he's not sincere; I don't say that for a minute. But people can't go about marrying every one they love, now can they? I should think you'd have seen that--with the heaps of men you had there at Halifax--hardly room to step over them." I said, slyly, "I never saw them that way." "Oh, well, I did. And by the way, I wonder what's become of that Captain Venables. He was a case! He could take more liberties in a half-hour--don't you think?" "He never took any liberties with me." "Then that must have been your fault. Talk about Mr. Millinger! Our men aren't in it with yours--not when it comes to the real thing." I got back to the subject in which I was most interested by saying, as I spread another note before me: "It seems to be the real thing with Hugh." "Oh, I dare say it is. It was the real thing with Jack. I don't say"--her voice took on a tender tremolo--"I don't say that it wasn't the real thing with me. But that didn't make any difference to father. It was the real thing with Pauline Gray--when she was down there at Baltimore; but when father picked her out for Jack, because of her money and his relations with old Mr. Gray--" I couldn't help half turning round, to cry out in tones of which I was unable to conceal the exasperation: "But I don't see how you can all let yourselves be hooked by the nose like that--not even by Mr. Brokenshire!" Her fatalistic resignation gave me a sense of helplessness. "Oh, well, you will before father has done with you--if Hugh goes on this way. Father's only playing with you so far." "He can't touch me," I declared, indignantly.