It was while Mr. Port wavered among his qualms of conscience, hesitating between his great longing to chuck Dorothy overboard, and so have done with her, and his sense of duty to Mr. Pennington Brown, that the subject of his perplexities herself appeared upon the scene; and her arrival at so critical a juncture seemed to suggest as a remote possibility that she had been all the while snuffing this particular battle from not very far off. “Dear Uncle Hutchinson,” said Miss Lee, with affectionate fervor, “do you think that your angel is most cruel and horrid because she is willing to go off in this way after her own selfish happiness and leave you all alone? But she won’t do it, dear, if you would rather have her stay. Her only wish, you know, has been to make you comfortable and happy; and you have been so good and so kind to her that she is ready to sacrifice even her love for your sake. Yes, if you would rather keep her to yourself she will stay. Only if she does stay,” and there was a warning tone of deep meaning in Miss Lee’s well-modulated voice, “her heart, of course, will be broken, and she will have to ask you to travel” with her for two or three years into out-of-the-way parts of the world (Mr. Port shuddered) “until her poor broken heart gets well. Not that it ever will get quite well again, you know; but she will be brave, and try to pretend for your sake that it has. So it shall be just as you say, dear; only for Pennington’s sake, who loves me so much, Uncle Hutchinson, I hope that perhaps you may be willing to let me go.” And having concluded this moving address, Miss Lee extended one of her well-shaped hands to Mr. Pennington Brown--who grasped it warmly, for he was deeply moved by so edifying an exhibition of affectionate and dutiful unselfishness--and with the other applied her handkerchief delicately to her eyes. Mr. Port was not in the least moved by Dorothy’s professions of self-sacrifice; but he was most seriously alarmed by her threat--that opened before him a dismal vista of bilious misery--to cart him for several years about the world on the pretext of a broken heart that required travel for its mending. [Illustration: Page 67 084] He believed, to be sure, that in a stand-up fight he could conquer Dorothy; but he had his doubts as to how long she would stay conquered--and between constant fighting and constant travel there is not much choice; for Mr. Port knew from experience how acute is that form of biliousness which results from rage. After all, self-preservation is the first law of nature; and under the stress thus put upon him, therefore, it is not surprising that Mr. Port’s qualms of conscience incident to his failure to do his duty to his neighbor vanished to the winds. Mr. Pennington Brown still held Dorothy’s hand in his own. “Will you make this great sacrifice, Hutch, for your old friend?” he asked.