Crystal ran up and knocked at his bedroom door.  Loud splashings from the adjoining bathroom were all the answer she got.  She sat down on the stairs and waited.  Those are the moments that try men’s and even women’s souls.  For the first time her enterprise seemed to her a little reckless.  For an instant she had the surprising experience of recognizing the fact that Ben was a total stranger.  She looked at the gray-stone stairway on which she was sitting and thought that her life had been as safe and sheltered as a cloister, and now, steered by this total stranger, she proposed to launch herself on an uncharted course of change.  And to this program she was to bring her father’s consent—­for she knew very well that if she couldn’t, Ben wouldn’t be able to—­in the comparatively short time between now and dinner.  Then, the splashing having ceased, the sound of bureau drawers succeeded, and Crystal sprang up and knocked again.

“That you, Peters?” said an unencouraging voice. (Peters was Mr. Cord’s valet.)

“No, dear, it’s I,” said Crystal.

“Oh, come in,” said Mr. Cord.  He was standing in the middle of the room in his shirt sleeves and gloomily contemplating the shirt he wore.  “What’s this laundress, anyhow?  A Bolshevist or a pastry-cook?” he said.  “Did you ever see anything like this shirt?”

Crystal approached and studied the shirt.  It appeared to her to be perfectly done up, but she said:  “Yes, dear, how terrible!  I’ll pack her off to-morrow, but you always look all right whatever you wear; that’s some comfort.”  She saw that even this hadn’t done much good, and, going to the heart of the problem, she asked, “How did your golf go?”

Mr. Cord’s gloom gathered as he answered, with resignation, “Oh, all right.”

His manner was exactly similar to Ben’s in his recent moment of depression, and not unlike McKellar’s when he had explained what he suffered under the good Lord’s weather.

“Is Eddie’s game any better?” asked Crystal, feeling her way.

“No,” cried her father, contemptuously.  “He’s rotten, but I’m worse.  And golf-clubs, Crystal!  No one can make a club any more.  Have you noticed that?  But the truth of the matter is, I’m getting too old to play golf.”  And Mr. Cord sat down with a good but unconscious imitation of a broken old man.

Of course Crystal swept this away.  She scolded him a little, pointed out his recent prowess, and spoke slightingly of all younger athletes, but she really had not time to do the job thoroughly, for the thought of Ben, sitting so anxious in the drawing-room alone, hurried her on.

“Anyhow, dear,” she said, “I’ve come to talk to you about something terribly important.  What would you say, father, if I told you I was engaged?”

Mr. Cord was so startled that he said, what was rare for him, the first thing that came into his head: 

“Not to Eddie?”

The true diplomatist, we have been told, simply takes advantage of chance, and Crystal was diplomatic.  “And suppose it is?” she replied.