“Might not your letter be put off for just a few days?” she pleaded, “in case—­until”—­

But Charles Verity broke in before she could finish her tender protest, a sadness, even hint of bitterness in his tone.

“You covet this thing so much,” he said.  “Your heart is so set on it?”

She made haste to reassure him.—­No, no not that way, not for her.  How could it signify, save on his account?  She only cared because greedy of his advancement, greedy to have him exalted—­placed where he belonged, on the summit, the apex, so that all must perceive and acknowledge his greatness.  As to herself—­and the flush deepened, making her in aspect deliciously youthful and ingenious—­she confessed misgivings.  Reported her talk with Carteret concerning the subject, and the scolding received from him thereupon.

“One more reason for writing in the sense I propose, then,” her father declared, “since it sets your over-modest doubts and qualms at rest, my dear.  That is settled.”

His hands weighed on her shoulders as though he suddenly needed and sought support.

“I will sit down,” he said.  “There are other matters to be discussed, and I can, perhaps, talk more easily so.”

He went the few steps across to the red chair.  Sank into it.  Leaned against the pillows, bending backward, his hand pressed to his left side.  His features contracted, and his breath caught as of one spent with running.  And Damaris, watching him, again received that desolating impression of change, of his being in spirit far removed, inaccessible to her sympathy, a stranger.  He had gone away and rather terribly left her alone.

“Are you in pain?” she asked, agonized.

“Discomfort,” he replied.  “We will not dignify this by the name of pain.  But I must wait for a time before dictating the letter.  There’s something I will ask you to do for me, my dear, meanwhile.”

“Yes”—­He paused, shifted his position, closed his eyes.

“Have you held any communication with—­”

He stopped, for the question irked him.  Even at this pass it went against the grain with him to ask of his daughter news of his son.

But in that pause our maiden’s scattered wits very effectually returned to her.

“With Darcy Faircloth?” she said.  And as Charles Verity bowed his head in assent—­“Yes, I should have told you already but—­but for all which has happened.  He was here the day before yesterday.  He came home from church with me.—­That was my doing, not his, to begin with.  You mustn’t think he put himself forward—­took advantage, I mean, of your being away.  If there is any blame it is mine.”

“Mine, rather—­and of long standing.  God forgive me!”

But Damaris, fairly launched now upon a wholly welcome topic, would have none of this.  To maintain her own courage, and, if it might be, combat that dreaded withdrawal of his spirit into regions where she could not follow, she braced herself to reason with him.