I knew she was in my arms crying like anything.  I haven’t seen her cry since she was a little tot.  She has laughed her way through life always up to now.  I couldn’t bear it.  I can’t bear it now, even remembering it.  I squeezed the story out of her, drop at a time, till I got pretty much the whole bucket full.  I tell you, Phil Lambert, you’ve got to give in.  I can’t have her heart broken.  You can’t have her heart broken.  God, man, it’s your funeral too.”

Phil felt very much as if it were his own funeral.  But he did not speak.  He couldn’t.  The other forged on, his big, mumbling bass mingled with the buzz of the blue-bottle in the window.

“I made up my mind something had to be done and done quick.  I wasn’t going to have my little girl run her head into the noose by marrying Lathrop when it was you she loved.  I got busy, made inquiries about you as I said.  I had to before I offered you the job naturally, but it was more than that.  I had to find out whether you were the kind of man I wanted my Carlotta to marry.  I found out, and came up here to put the proposition to you.  I talked to your father first, by the way, and got his consent to go ahead with my plans.”

“You went to my father!” There was concern and a trace of indignation in Phil’s voice.

“Naturally I was playing to win.  I had to hold all the trumps.  I wanted your father on my side—­had to have him in fact.  He came without a murmur.  He is a good sport.  Said all he wanted was your happiness, same as all I wanted was Carlotta’s.  We quite understood each other.”

Phil sat silent with down cast eyes on his almost untasted salad.  He couldn’t bear to think of his father’s being attacked like that, hit with a lightning bolt out of a clear sky.  The more he thought about it the more he resented it.  Of course Dad would agree.  He was a good sport as Mr. Cressy said.  Rut that didn’t make the thing any easier or more justifiable.

“Your father is willing.  I want it.  Carlotta wants it.  You want it, yourself.  Lord, boy, be honest.  You know you do.  You’ll never regret giving in.  Remember it is for Carlotta’s happiness we are both looking for.”  There was an almost pleading note in Harrison Cressy’s voice—­a note few men had heard.  He was more used to command than to sue for what he desired.

Phil rose from the table.  His face was a little white as he stood there, tall, quiet, perfectly master of himself and the situation.  Even before the young man spoke Harrison Cressy knew he had failed.

“I am sorry, Mr. Cressy.  If Carlotta wants happiness with me I am afraid she will have to come to Dunbury.”

“You won’t reconsider?”

“There is nothing to reconsider.  There never was any question.  I am sorry you even raised one in Dad’s mind.  You shouldn’t have gone to him in the first place.  You should have come to me.  It was for me to settle.”

“Highty, tighty!” fumed the exasperated magnate.  “People don’t tell me what I should and should not do.  They do what I tell ’em.”