Joan moved quickly to his side with a cry of protest. Money it might be necessary to pay, but it must be asked for, not offered. To offer it was to admit the claim. "What are you saying, Robert?" she cried. Robert turned to her quietly. "It must come to that in the end. Why not now and have done with it? How much?" A smile of triumph broadened over Challoner's face. Outside the door Cynthia leaned forward, her hands clasped over her heart in an agony of suspense. Why didn't he answer? Why was he so long? The answer came at length: "I want my daughter, nothing else. She is not of age. I have a right to her; I'll take her away with me to-night." Cynthia crouched back in her chair, clasping its arms tightly with her hands, and making herself very small. To Joan and Robert Daventry the demand was incredible, even though their ears had heard it. Challoner could not mean it. It was an expedient to raise the price. But Cynthia had caught a note of malice in his voice which brought back before her eyes the malice of his looks as he had stood before her in the field. He meant to take her away, and that night. She glanced toward the door. To leave her home, to be swallowed up in the darkness with this stranger for her companion! She clung to the chair in a panic of terror. Then she heard Robert Daventry repeating the words in a daze: "You want to take her away? Cynthia?" And as though the meaning of Challoner's demand for the first time broke in on him, "Never!" he cried violently. "I want to take her away to-night;" and now the malice in Challoner's voice was audible to Joan too. She stared at him over the table. He sat nodding his head at her with little quick movements, his eyes very bright, and a horrid smile about his mouth. She remembered what Cynthia herself had said: "He seemed to hate me." "You grudge her her happiness, her life with us!" she exclaimed; and Challoner beat his fist upon the table in a sudden anger. "Is it strange?" he cried. "All these years here she has been sitting soft and walking daintily. What have I been doing? 'Look at yourself in a glass'--That's what you said," and he turned to Robert Daventry. "I told you I'd remember it, and I do. A fine life I have had of it for fourteen years. Mate tea and enough work a day to throw a trades-unionist into hysterics! No wonder I've lost my looks."