Inasmuch as Mr. Caffyn was secretary of the Church of England Purity Society with private means of his own, while his daughter's suitor was an agnostic journalist who had never yet earned more than thirty-five shillings in one week, it is perhaps not astonishing that the young man should have begun to apologize for lighting the gas needlessly. To Norah, however, these apologies sounded infinitely pusillanimous; from having been very much in love yesterday morning she had already reached indifference, and this final exhibition of cowardice brought her to the point of positively disliking Wilfred. Nevertheless, she managed somehow to impress her father with her intention to die rather than give him up, and after an argument of about ten minutes, in the course of which Norah did all the talking, her father all the shouting, and her mother and suitor all the fidgeting, Mr. Caffyn was at last sufficiently exasperated and ordered Wilfred Curlew to leave the house immediately. In spite of Mrs. Caffyn's entreaties the pitch of her husband's voice had been so piercing that he had probably managed not merely to put ideas into the heads of the children still in the dining-room, but even to corrupt the dreams of the sleeping innocents up-stairs. "Gilbert dear," his wife besought. "The servants!" "I pay my servants to attend to me, not to my affairs," said Mr. Caffyn, majestically. His wife might have replied that under the terms of their marriage contract it was she who paid the servants out of her own money; but having been married twenty-one years she had long ceased to derive any satisfaction from putting herself in the right. Poor Wilfred, finding that he must either say something to break the silence which had succeeded Mr. Caffyn's denunciation of his behavior or retire, preferred to retire, and with one arm firmly wedged into the small of his back he stumbled awkwardly down the hall to the front door. Norah made no attempt to alleviate the discomfiture of his exit; but Arthur Drake, with a chivalry, or, to put it at its lowest valuation, with a social tact that amazed her, covered Wilfred's retreat by such a display of farewell courtesies as made even the practical Dorothy pause and consider if there might not be something in love, after all. "Bolt the door," Mr. Caffyn commanded. "And be sure that the chain is properly fastened."