“Papa, you must know what it is. I know that you have seen--Mr. Leigh!” “How do you know anything about it? What have you to do with whom I have seen? Run away. I do not mean to enter into any explanations on this subject with you.” “Then with whom will you enter into explanations? You cannot speak to mamma; she must not be worried. Papa, I am not a little girl now, to be told to run away.” “You seem to be determined not to lose a moment in telling me so.” “I should not have told you so,” said Bee, looking at him over the high back of his writing-table, “if you had not told me I was not to talk to mamma.” He looked up at her, and their eyes met; both of them keenly, fiercely blue, lit up with fires of combat. It is often imagined that blue eyes are the softest eyes--but not by those who are acquainted with the kind which belonged to the Kingswards, which might have been called sapphires, if sapphires ever flash and cut the air as diamonds do. They were not either so dark as sapphires--they were like nothing but themselves, two pairs of blue eyes that might have been made to order, so like were they to each other, and both blazing across that table as if they would have set the house on fire. “That’s an excellent point,” he said. “I can’t deny it. What made you so terrifically clever all at once?” There is nothing more stinging than to be called clever in the midst of a discussion. Bee’s eyes seemed to set fire to her face, at least, which flashed crimson upon her father’s startled sight. “When one has someone else to think of, someone’s interests to take care of----” “Which are your own interests--and vastly more important than anything which concerns your father and mother.” “I never said so--nor thought so, papa--but if they are different from yours, that’s no reason,” said Bee, bold in words but faltering in manner, “is it, why I should not think of them, if, as you say, they’re my own interests, papa?” “You are very bold, Bee.” “What am I to do if I have no one to speak for me? Papa, Aubrey----” “I forbid you to speak with such familiarity of a man whom you have nothing to do with, and whom you scarcely know.” “Papa, Aubrey--” cried Bee, with astonishment. Colonel Kingsward jumped up from his table in a fury of impatience. “How dare you come and besiege me here in my own room with your Aubrey?--a man whom you have not known a month; a stranger to the family.” “Papa, you must let me speak. You allowed me to be engaged to him. If you had said ‘no’ at first, there might, perhaps, have been some reason in it.” “Perhaps--some reason!” he repeated, with an angry laugh. “Yes, for even then it was not your own happiness that was in question. It was I, after all, that was to marry him.” “And you think that is a reason for defying me?”