“Mrs. Eveleth, do you know what I think?  I think that you and I have come down here on what looks like a fool’s business.  If it wasn’t for leaving Dorothea here with Reggie Bradford, I’d put you in the motor and we’d travel back to New York as fast as tires could take us.”

“Upon my word,” she confessed, “you make me almost wish we could do it.  But, of course, it isn’t possible.  There must be some one here to meet Dorothea—­and explain.  I could do that if you liked.”

“Oh no!” he exclaimed, with a new change of mind; “I should look as if I were showing the white feather.”

“On the contrary, you’d look as if you knew what it was to be a man.”

“And Derek Pruyn might hold out against me in the end.”

“It would be time enough, even then, to do—­what you meant to do to-night; and I’d help you.”

He hesitated still, till another thought occurred to him.

“Oh, what’s the good?  It’s too late to rectify anything now.  They must know at her house by this time that she has gone to meet me.”

“No; I’ve anticipated that.  They understand that she’s here, at the Bay Tree Inn—­with me.”

He moved away from her with a quick backward leap.

“With you?  You’ve done that?  You’ve seen them?  You’ve told them?  You’re a wonderful woman, Mrs. Eveleth.  I see now what you’ve been up to,” he added, with a shrill, nervous laugh.  “You’ve been turning me round your little finger, and I’m hanged if you haven’t done it very cleverly.  You’ve failed in this one point, however, that you haven’t done it quite cleverly enough.  I stay.”

“Very well; but you won’t refuse to let me stay too—­for the reasons that I gave you at first.”

“You’re wily, I must say!  If you can’t get best, you’re willing to take second best.  Isn’t that it?”

“That’s it exactly.  I did hope that no marriage would take place between Dorothea and you to-night.  I hoped that, before you came to that, you’d realize to what a degree you’re taking advantage of her wilfulness and her love for you—­for it’s a mixture of both—­to put her in a false position, from which she’ll never wholly free herself as long as she lives.  I hoped you’d be man enough to go back and win her from her father by open means.  Failing all that, I hoped you’d let me blunt the keenest edge of your folly by giving to your marriage the countenance which my presence at it could bestow.  Was there any harm in that?  Was there anything for you to resent, or for me to be ashamed of?  Is a good thing less good because I wish it, or a wise thought less wise because I think it?  You talk of turning you round my little finger, as though it was something at which you had to take offence.  My dear boy, that only shows how young you are.  Every good woman, if I may call myself one, turns the men she cares for round her little finger, and it’s the men who are worth most in life who submit most readily