John, in his consternation, did not answer the question. Two ladies! After a while, he said to himself, while he completed his dressing hastily, that no doubt his mother had sent for Susie, and that together they had come to plead with him to abandon the unfortunate, to keep everything secret. John smiled at himself in his glass at the thought. Abandon him! The poor culprit, the convict, the deserted father had been more magnanimous than they were, and had fled from him not to shame him. So much the less could his son abandon him. He prepared himself to tell them his resolution as he finished his dressing. Susie would cry, perhaps, but neither of them would care much: why should they care? He had never entered actively into their lives. It would be nothing to them to lose him. They might, indeed, have been proud of him, had he come to be, as he believed he should so short a time ago, a successful and famous engineer. But pride and love were two different things. They might plead as they pleased, but he would not give in to them. What, preserve this hideous secret, cheat the world into supposing them an honourable family? That might have been, perhaps, had John been entering upon a successful career, accompanied by the plaudits of the office, and with many things depending upon him. But now when nothing depended upon him, when he was considered to have justified all prejudices against him (of which now he knew the cause) and to be himself a traitor--_now_ that he should shrink from doing his duty! No, no! His father after all was everything that belonged to him, as he was the only thing that belonged to his father. He went through all this with himself as he prepared to go downstairs. And he threw himself into their thoughts. He fancied how, as they heard his step coming down, they would say over to each other the arguments it would be best to use, and the mother might perhaps suggest to Susie to be more loving than usual to win him. It was very likely that she would do that. And when John opened the parlour door and found himself in a moment caught in some one’s arms, the first flush of consciousness in his mind was that to the letter the programme was being carried out. But that flush of consciousness was very brief. The next was different, it was rapture and anguish mingled together. For the arms that were flung about him, the face that was put close to his was not his sister’s but Elly’s--Elly’s! Good heavens! ‘Don’t!’ he cried, putting her away from him, putting away her hands from his shoulders. ‘Don’t! for the love of God.’ ‘Jack!’ she cried, ‘Jack!’ and kissed him determinedly, openly, without a blush, flinging off those deterring hands.