It was Williams' duty to point out that persuasion was the only method open to them. His sympathies were with the lovers, but he felt it his duty to mention to Miss Southgate his conviction that the best way to stop the whole thing was to send for Dominic Hale. "This is not Hale's plan," he said. "I am sure he would not stand for it. If you send for him and have a talk you will find that he believes they are going to be married before they sail." But Miss Southgate was too angry to listen to him. She tossed the suggestion aside with the utmost contempt. "How can you be so innocent?" she exclaimed. "The whole plan is his. Doris would never have the imagination to think of such a thing. She has simply fallen into the hands of a designing man. She has no will of her own. You are utterly mistaken." Well, perhaps he was; but he wanted to find Hale and have a talk with him; but as he could find no trace of the young man, he was obliged to content himself with an interview with Doris. He wanted to point out to her that she was ruining Hale irretrievably. It was the sort of thing a man could never live down. It would be said that he preferred to live on the dead husband's money rather than to make the widow his wife. He put it as badly as he could, but Doris was unshaken. She nodded her head. "Yes, I know," she said. "No one will understand. He sacrifices his reputation too--not any more than I do, Mr. Williams, though perhaps not any less. We must learn to live without the world, but we can--we shall have each other." Williams thumped his hand on his knee. "I can't believe it of him," he said. "Such a disgusting rôle! So unmanly!" Doris smiled at him sadly. "Does it seem unmanly to you?" she said meditatively. "It seems to me it wouldn't be manly to say no to a woman who loves him and has been as unhappy as I have been." Yes, Williams could see that point of view too. Hale might say to himself that a girl who had lived those years of self-abnegation had a right to his love and Southgate's money, if she wanted them both; that it wasn't his part to take a noble stand for which she must pay. There was a certain nobility in not caring what the world said of him. And yet-- He tried one last argument. "Well, then for yourself; can't you see that it's contemptible to cling so to a fortune? What's poverty, after all? You're young. Marry the young man." She stared at him. "But, Mr. Williams," she said, "that's exactly what I promised Antonia I wouldn't do." "Break your promise." She looked really shocked. "What a funny thing for you to say--a lawyer!" She shook her head. "I never broke my word in all my life. Besides, Antonia says that Alexander particularly disliked the idea of my remarriage." Williams thought this was too trifling. "You can hardly suppose," he said stiffly, "that you will be fulfilling the wishes of your husband by going to Spain with a man to whom you are not married."