“I couldn’t tell him it would be out of the question always, because I didn’t know.  As long as he didn’t ask me for a definite answer, I didn’t feel obliged to give him one.”

“I think you might have committed yourself as far as that.”

“I prefer not to commit myself at all.  I’m very young and inexperienced—­”

“I’m glad you see that.”

“Though neither so inexperienced nor so young as mamma was when she married you.  And you were only twenty-one yourself, father, while Carli is nearly twenty-three.”

“I wouldn’t compare the two instances if I were you.”

“I don’t.  I merely state the facts.  I want to make it plain that, though we’re both very young, we’re not so young as to make the case exceptional.”

“But I understood you to say that there was no—­case.”

“There is to this extent:  that while I’m free, Carli considers himself bound.  That’s the way we’ve left it.”

“That is to say, he’s engaged, but you aren’t.”

“That’s what Carli thinks.”

“Then I refuse to consent to it.”

“But, father dear,” Dorothea asked, arching her pretty eyebrows, “do you have to consent to what Carli thinks about himself?  Can’t he do that just as he likes?”

“He can’t become a hanger-on of my family without my permission.”

“He says he’s not going to hang on, but to stand off.  He’s going to allow me full liberty of action and fair play.”

“That’s very kind of him.”

“Only, when I choose to come back to him I shall find him waiting.”

“I might suggest that you never go back to him at all, only that there’s a better way of meeting the situation.  That is to put a stop to the nonsense now; and I shall take steps to do it.”

Dorothea preserved her self-control, but two tiny hectic spots began to burn in her cheeks, while she kept her eyes persistently lowered, as though to veil the spirit of determination glowing there.

“Hadn’t you better leave that to me?” she asked, after a brief pause.

“I will, if you promise to put it through.”

“You see,” she answered, in a reasoning tone, “my whole object is not to promise anything—­yet.  I should think the advantage of that would strike you, if only from the point of view of business.  It’s like having the refusal of a picture or a piece of property.  You may never want them; but it does no harm to know that nobody else can get them till you decide.”

“Neither does it do any harm to let somebody else have a chance, when you know that you can’t take them.”

“Of course not; but I couldn’t say that now.  I quite realize that I’m too young to know my own mind; and it’s only reasonable to consider things all round.  Carli is rich and good-looking.  He has a cultivated mind and a kind heart.  There are lots of men, to whom you’d have no objection whatever, who wouldn’t possess all those qualifications, or perhaps any of them.”