“It was no appointment, papa. I was walking, and Dr. Langton came up in his dog-cart.” “Oh, very likely; these things fall in so pat, don’t they? I suppose I am past the age for encountering people in dog-carts just when I want them. But you must not calculate too much on that,” he said with a laugh. “There’s no reason why I shouldn’t marry and provide myself with another family, that might be more to my mind than you.” To this Winnie made no reply. The threat had offended her on other occasions; now it affected her with that dreadful sense of the intolerable to which words can give no expression; it brought the blood in a rush to her face, and she looked at him in spite of herself with eyes in which pity and horror were mingled. He met her look with a laugh. “You are horrified, are you? That’s all very well for you; but let me tell you, many an older man than I, and less pleasing, perhaps, has got a pretty young wife before now. It has to be paid for, like every other luxury; but women are plenty, my dear, though you mayn’t think so.” “Papa, do you think this is a subject to discuss with me?” “Why not? You are the only one except myself that would be much affected by it. It might interfere with your comforts, and it would interfere very much with your importance, I can tell you, Miss Winnie.” “Then, father,” the girl said, “for Heaven’s sake do it, and don’t talk of it any more. Rather that a thousand times than to be forced to agree to what I abhor, than to be put in another’s place, than to have to give up”-- He turned round and looked at her somewhat sternly. “What do you expect to be obliged to give up?” he said. Between her fear of doing harm to him, whose tranquillity she had been charged to preserve, and her fear of precipitating matters and bringing upon herself at once the prohibition she feared--and that natural nervous desire to forestall a catastrophe which was entirely contradictory of the other sentiments, Winifred paused and replied to him with troubled looks rather than with speech. When she found her voice, she answered, faltering-- “What you said to me yesterday, meant giving up the truth and all I have ever cared for in my life. I have always wanted, desired, more than my life, to be of use to--the boys--and to be made to appear as if I were against them”-- Her voice was interrupted with sobs. Ah, but was not this the beginning of treachery? It was the truth, but not the whole truth; the boys were much, but there was something which was still more. Already in the first outset and beginning she was but falsely true. “This is all about the boys, is it?” he said coldly--“as you call them. I should say the men--who have taken their own way, and had their own will, and like it, I hope. If it comes to a bargain between you and me, Winnie, there must be something more than that.”