Having despatched the office boy to Westbourne Terrace with this letter, Conolly went off to lunch.  Mr. Lind went back to his club, and then to Westbourne Terrace, where he was informed that the young ladies were together in the drawing-room.  Some minutes later, Marian, discussing Conolly’s letter with Elinor, was interrupted by a servant, who informed her that her father desired to see her in his study.

“Now for it, Marian!” said Nelly, when the servant was gone.  “Remember that you have to meet the most unreasonable of adversaries, a parent asserting his proprietary rights in his child.  Dont be sentimental.  Leave that to him:  he will be full of a father’s anguish on discovering that his cherished daughter has feelings and interests of her own.  Besides, Conolly has crushed him; and he will try to crush you in revenge.”

“I wish I were not so nervous,” said Marian.  “I am not really afraid, but for all that, my heart is beating very unpleasantly.”

“I wish I were in your place,” said Elinor.  “I feel like a charger at the sound of the trumpet.”

“I am glad, for poor papa’s sake, that you are not,” said Marian, going out.

She knocked at the study door; and her father’s voice, as he bade her come in, impressed her more than ever before.  He was seated behind the writing-table, in front of which a chair was set for his daughter.  She, unaccustomed from her childhood to submit to any constraint but that which the position of a guest, which she so often occupied, had trained her to impose on herself, was rather roused than awed by this magisterial arrangement.  She sat down with less than her usual grace of manner, and looked at him with her brows knitted.  It was one of the rare moments in which she reminded him of her mother.  An angry impulse to bid her not dare look so at him almost got the better of him.  However, he began prudently with a carefully premeditated speech.

“It is my duty, Marian,” he said gravely, “to speak of the statement you made last night.  We need not allude to the painful scene which took place then:  better let that rest and be forgotten as soon as possible.  But the discovery of what you have been doing without my knowledge has cost me a sleepless night and a great deal of anxiety.  I wish to reason with you now quite calmly and dispassionately; and I trust you will remember that I am older and have far more experience of the world than you, and that I am a better judge of your interests than you yourself can possibly be.  Ahem!  I have been this morning to the City, where I saw Mr. Conolly, and endeavored to make him understand the true nature of his conduct toward me—­and, I may add, toward you—­in working his way clandestinely into an intimacy with you.  I shall not describe to you what passed; but I may say that I have found him to be a person with whom you could not hope for a day’s happiness.  Even apart from his habits and tastes, which are those of a mere workman,