"Tchah!" ejaculated Mrs. Banks with supreme contempt. "Do not talk that nonsense to me, but listen, now, to what I have to say. I will make everything quite plain to you. We have decided that Arthur and Brenda shall be married; but we condescend to that amiable weakness of yours which always demands that there shall be no scandal. It must surely be your motto at the Hall to avoid scandal--at any cost. So we are agreed to make a concession. The marriage we insist upon; but we are willing, all of us, to emigrate. We will take ourselves away, so that no one can point to the calamity of a marriage between a Banks and a Jervaise. It will, I think, break my husband's heart, but we see that there is nothing else to be done." Old Jervaise's expression was certainly one of relief. He would, I am sure, have agreed to that compromise if he had been alone; he might even have agreed, as it was, if he had been given the chance. But Frank realised his father's weakness not less surely than we did, and although this was probably not the precise moment he would have chosen, he instantly took the case into his own hands. "Oh! no, Mrs. Banks, certainly not," he said. "In the first place we did not come here to bargain with you, and in the second it must be perfectly plain to you that the scandal remains none the less because you have all gone away. We have come to fetch my sister home, that's the only thing that concerns you." "And if she will not go with you?" asked Mrs. Banks. "She must," Frank returned. "And still, if she will not go?" "Then we shall bring an action against you for abducting her." Mrs. Banks smiled gently and pursed her mouth "To avoid a scandal?" she asked. "If you persist in your absurd demands, there will be a scandal in any case," Frank replied curtly. "I suppose my wishes don't count at all?" Brenda put in. "Obviously they don't," Frank said. "But, look here, father," Brenda continued, turning to old Jervaise; "_why_ do you want me to come back? We've never got on, I and the rest of you. _Why_ can't you let me go and be done with it?" Jervaise fidgeted uneasily and looked up with a touch of appeal at his son. He had begun to mumble some opening when Frank interposed. "Because we won't," he said, "and that's the end of it. There's nothing more to be said. I've told you precisely how the case stands. Either you come back with us without a fuss, or we shall begin an action at once." I know now that Frank Jervaise was merely bluffing, and that they could have had no case, since Brenda was over eighteen, and was not being detained against her will. But none of us, probably not even old Jervaise himself, knew enough of the law to question the validity of the threat.