She came over and sat by his chair and let one hand rest on his white hair. "Father," she said in a low voice, tremulously repressed, "you are undertaking to rule offhand on a question which is too vital to my life to be treated with snap judgment. I've tried to meet your wishes and I want to go on trying, but in this you must think well before you take a position so--so absolute that perhaps--" He shook her hand away and his eyes blazed. "I _have_ thought well," he vehemently declared. "I have not only thought, but I have prayed. I have waited silently and watched in an effort to be just. I have asked God's guidance." "God's guidance could hardly have told you that Stuart Farquaharson has loose ideas or that he's unrighteous or that his blood could corrupt our blood--because none of those things are true or akin to the truth." For an instant the old man gazed at her in an amazement which turned quickly to a wrath of almost crazily blazing eyes, and his utterance came with a violence of fury. "Do you mean that such an unspeakable idiocy has already come to pass--that you and this--this--young amateur jockey and card-player from the South--" He broke suddenly off with a contempt that made his words seem to curl and snap with flame. The girl rose from her place on the arm of his chair. She stood lancelike in her straightness and her eyes blazed, too, but her voice lost neither its control nor its dignity. "I mean," she said, "that this gentleman who needs no apologist and no defense, has honored me by telling me that he loves me--and that I love him." "And his high courage has prevented him from admitting this to me and facing my just wrath?" "His courage has been strong enough to concede to my wish that I might tell you myself, and in my own time." The library door stood open and the hall gave out onto the verandah where Stuart Farquaharson sat waiting for Conscience to return. The minister attempted to rise from his chair and fell back into it, with a groan, as he remembered his helplessness. That helplessness did not, however, abate his anger, and his voice rose as it was accustomed to rise when, pounding the pulpit pillow, he wished to drive home some impassioned utterance, beyond the chance of missing any sleepy ear. "If what you say is true, this man has abused my hospitality and used my roof as an ambuscade to attack me. He is not, as you say, a man of honor or of courage, but a coward and a sneak! I have more to say, but it had better be said to him direct. Please send him to me." The girl hesitated, then she wheeled with flaming face toward the chair. "I have been willing," she said, "to smother my life in an effort to meet your ideas, though I knew them to be little ideas. Now I see that in yielding everything one can no more please you than in yielding nothing. If he goes, I go, too. You may take your choice."