"He _didn't_ forbid our marrying," the young man broke in sharply, glaring with ill-suppressed irritation at Luella, while he softly patted the girl's shoulder. "He begged us on his bended knees to marry, though I don't know how you know him." Luella paused with her hand on the door. "What!" she exclaimed sharply. "Then it was your folks?" She looked at the girl. "No, it wasn't!" Dorothy lifted her head. "They b-begged us on _their_ b-bended knees, too," she sobbed and disappeared again. "For the Lord's sake!" Luella muttered. Then turning fiercely on him she took a step forward. "Do you mean to tell me you're scoundrel enough--" she began, but the young man--he was really only a boy--shook his head angrily. "Not at all, not at all," he burst out with a curious likeness to his father, "I'm no more a scoundrel than you are, Mrs. Judd, and you'll oblige me by acting accordingly." It was so evident that he meant what he said, he appeared so righteously indignant, that Luella paused, dumbfounded, twisting the apron in her hands. "Wh-why ain't you married, then?" she demanded. The young man surveyed her calmly. "Because I--we disapprove of marriage," he said. Luella turned a brick-red; her mouth opened vaguely. Though she spoke not a word, he answered her amazed face. "The conditions of marriage at the present day," he stated loftily, "are not such as to lead me--to lead us to suppose that as an institution it has accomplished its purpose. Where it is not merely legalized--" "Oh, Frank!" the girl moaned softly, putting her little hand over his opened lips. He kissed it gently, but removed it. "To say nothing of the absolute misery you can see all about you as a result of a chain that ought long ago to have been broken, or better still, never--" "And before that child, too!" Luella burst out. "Caroline, you get right up and come home. I never heard anything like it in my life. Come this minute, now!" Caroline rose unwillingly; she thought Luella unnecessarily severe. "As to that," young Mr. Wortley announced composedly, "we differ again. The sooner these matters are discussed frankly before children, the sooner we shall have fewer unhappy men and women. There is nothing whatever in my intentions or Miss--or Dorothy's, to shock or affront the youngest child. I have no children myself, but--" "Humph!" Luella sniffed furiously, "I sh'd hope not!" "--but _if_ I had," he pursued evenly, "I should teach them precisely--" "Look here," Luella interrupted roughly, "look me in the face, both of you!" They turned their eyes full on her, the boy's dilated to fanaticism, glowing with obstinacy; the girl's, wet and pleading, miserable, but full of love. Luella, with narrowed lids, bored into those clear young eyes: no shadow of deceit, no hint of shuffling or double-dealing could withstand that relentless scrutiny. Slowly her face softened, her eyebrows relaxed, her hold on the twisted apron loosened.