She clasped her hands together, and wrung them hard.  A few tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly over her cheeks.

“I can’t give Frank up,” she said, faintly.  “You don’t care for me, I know; but you used to care for my father.  Will you try to be kind to me for my father’s sake?”

The last words died away in a whisper; she could say no more.  Never had she felt the illimitable power which a woman’s love possesses of absorbing into itself every other event, every other joy or sorrow of her life, as she felt it then.  Never had she so tenderly associated Frank with the memory of her lost parents, as at that moment.  Never had the impenetrable atmosphere of illusion through which women behold the man of their choice—­the atmosphere which had blinded her to all that was weak, selfish, and mean in Frank’s nature—­surrounded him with a brighter halo than now, when she was pleading with the father for the possession of the son.  “Oh, don’t ask me to give him up!” she said, trying to take courage, and shuddering from head to foot.  In the next instant, she flew to the opposite extreme, with the suddenness of a flash of lightning.  “I won’t give him up!” she burst out violently.  “No! not if a thousand fathers ask me!”

“I am one father,” said Mr. Clare.  “And I don’t ask you.”

In the first astonishment and delight of hearing those unexpected words, she started to her feet, crossed the room, and tried to throw her arms round his neck.  She might as well have attempted to move the house from its foundations.  He took her by the shoulders and put her back in her chair.  His inexorable eyes looked her into submission; and his lean forefinger shook at her warningly, as if he was quieting a fractious child.

“Hug Frank,” he said; “don’t hug me.  I haven’t done with you yet; when I have, you may shake hands with me, if you like.  Wait, and compose yourself.”

He left her.  His hands went back into his pockets, and his monotonous march up and down the room began again.

“Ready?” he asked, stopping short after a while.  She tried to answer.  “Take two minutes more,” he said, and resumed his walk with the regularity of clock-work.  “These are the creatures,” he thought to himself, “into whose keeping men otherwise sensible give the happiness of their lives.  Is there any other object in creation, I wonder, which answers its end as badly as a woman does?”

He stopped before her once more.  Her breathing was easier; the dark flush on her face was dying out again.

“Ready?” he repeated.  “Yes; ready at last.  Listen to me; and let’s get it over.  I don’t ask you to give Frank up.  I ask you to wait.”

“I will wait,” she said.  “Patiently, willingly.”

“Will you make Frank wait?”

“Yes.”

“Will you send him to China?”

Her head drooped upon her bosom, and she clasped her hands again, in silence.  Mr. Clare saw where the difficulty lay, and marched straight up to it on the spot.