‘Now, father, you know you didn’t hear;’ and, in spite of herself, Roma’s voice shook with apprehension. Michael Meredith smiled pleasantly. ‘Well, Roma, you need not make such a mystery. Was he making love to you?’ ‘No.’ She was so astonished by the sudden charge, that she could only utter the monosyllable. ‘Ah, well, we must have patience. I had hoped to hear that he had proposed.’ ‘Father!’ ‘Well, child’—he began to speak a little irritably—‘it will soon come to that.’ ‘I don’t know,’ answered Roma guardedly. ‘I do. Now, Roma, be frank with me; do you think he means marriage yet?’ ‘No, father.’ ‘Has he not looked love, or spoken love?’ ‘No, father.’ ‘I wonder at that, for I think he means it.’ Roma could not forbear saying: ‘I do not think such a thing has ever entered his head.’ Meredith’s face contracted with vexation for a moment, and then he smiled genially: ‘You really think that, dear girl! Then it must be put into it, as soon as possible.’ ‘What do you mean, father?’ The old man was still smiling blandly and dreamily. ‘I must open my mind to him on the subject; and tell him my wishes.’ ‘Father, father! don’t do that!’ cried poor Roma. ‘Let the proposal come from him!’ ‘But you say he does not seem inclined to make it,’ argued the old man, irritability struggling with calm superiority for the upper hand. ‘Things cannot go on like this. The suspense is trying to me. I must have a conversation with him, and see if we cannot get it settled. I do not think he will needlessly thwart me. He is very fond of me, is young Phil Debenham.’ Roma’s heart sank. Her late talk with Tor rose up in her memory with dreadful distinctness. She had pleaded with him not to vex her father—not to cross his will. He had promised to avoid exciting him, had given his word that he would not cause him annoyance. And now her father was going to press her hand upon him—ask him to make her his wife! and he would think that she had known this all along, and had tried to entrap him into a temporizing, which would be a check on his liberty and a half-pledge to the egotistic old man. Such a thought was terrible, yet Roma could not shake it off. What Philip Debenham would say to such a proposal she could not guess. Whatever answer he made, the humiliation to her would be the same. Refusal would make her father ill and miserable—might it not even cause his death? That thought was enough to prevent her from using her liberty and declining the offer of marriage if it should be made. Yet the idea of being handed over to a man, who had not demanded or wished her as a wife, was as repugnant to her as being sold into slavery. However the matter might end, poor Roma felt that she would be disgraced for life; and yet she dared not speak one word of rebellion to her autocratic father. Words, as she well knew, would be worse than wasted upon him. CHAPTER XIV. MEREDITH’S PROPOSITION.