He spoke sharply. "I wish you to understand that you're inducing a young man to act in a way he is going to find contrary to his interests." I could barely nerve myself to look up at him. "If by the 'young man' you mean Mr. Hugh Brokenshire, then I'm inducing him to do nothing whatever; unless," I added, "you call it an inducement that I--I"--I was bound to force the word out--"unless you call it an inducement that I love him." "But that's it," Mrs. Rossiter broke in. "That's what my father means. If you'd stop caring anything about him you wouldn't give him encouragement." I looked at her with a dim, apologetic smile. It was a time, I felt, to speak not only with more courage, but with more sentiment than I was accustomed to use in expressing myself. "I'm afraid I can't give my heart, and take it back, like that." "I can," she returned, readily. She spoke as if it was a matter of cracking her knuckles or wagging her ears. "If I don't want to like a person I don't do it. It's training and self-command." "You're fortunate," I said, quietly. Why I should have glanced again at Mrs. Brokenshire I hardly know; but I did so, as I added: "I've had no training of that kind--and I doubt if many women have." Mrs. Brokenshire, who was gazing at me with the same kind of fascinated stare as on the former occasion, faintly, but quite perceptibly, inclined her head. In this movement I was sure I had the key to the mystery that seemed to surround her. "All this," J. Howard declared, magisterially, "is beside the point. If you've told my son that you'd marry him--" "I haven't." "Or even given him to understand that you would--" "I've only given him to understand that I'd marry him--on conditions." "Indeed? And would it be discreet on my part to inquire the terms you've been kind enough to lay down?" I pulled myself together and spoke firmly. "The first is that I'll marry him--if his family come to me and express a wish to have me as a sister and a daughter." Old Mrs. Billing emitted the queer, cracked cackle of a hen when it crows, but she put up her lorgnette and examined me more closely. Ethel Rossiter gasped audibly, moving her chair a little farther round in my direction. Mrs. Brokenshire stared with concentrated intensity, but somehow, I didn't know why, I felt that she was backing me up. The great man contented himself with saying, "Oh, you will!" I ignored the tone to speak with a decision and a spirit I was far from feeling. "Yes, sir, I will. I shall not steal him from you--not so long as he's dependent." "That's very kind. And may I ask--" "You haven't let me tell you my other condition." "True. Go on." I panted the words out as best I could. "I've told him I'd marry him--if he rendered himself independent; if he earned his own money and became a man." "Ah! And you expect one or the other of these miracles to take place?" "I expect both."