The paternal kiss was this time impressed upon her forehead with a paternal smile, and she could say nothing. The futility of saying anything was impressed upon her with each of the two paternal kisses. The next moment she was left alone, and her most prominent thought was that he had spoken so convincingly as to leave no opening for any one to say a single word. And yet, only two hours before, she had been kissed on the cheeks and on the hair by Pierce Winwood! The result of her father’s words was to make her feel far more deeply than she had yet felt that she had been guilty of something dreadful in the way of double-dealing when she had allowed Pierce Winwood to kiss her--even if she had allowed him to kiss only one of her hands she would have been guilty (she now felt) of something almost shocking. Breathing as she now did, in the centre of the paternal halo of her father’s phrases, she could not but feel shocked as she reflected upon her frankness in confessing (in the breathing spaces between his kisses) her love for Pierce Winwood, and before she met her mother she was actually thinking what reparation she could make to her parents for her shocking conduct. Would an attitude of complete submission to their wishes be sufficient, she asked herself. She came to the conclusion that it would not be an excessive atonement to make for so terrible a lapse from the conduct which was expected from her. It certainly would not, for her father had given her to understand that he had only been induced to give his consent to her engagement to Ernest Clifton, because it was clearly her dearest hope to get his consent to that engagement. How absurd then was her thought that there was any atonement in an attitude of submission to a fate which her parents had the best reasons for believing that she most ardently sought. And thus she had to face her mother. The maternal halo which her mother welded to that of her father formed a most appropriate decoration, any connoisseur of phrases would have admitted. It was mat gilt with a burnished bit of _repousse_ here and there along the border. But the double halo, though decorative enough, was too heavy for Josephine’s head and its weight oppressed her.