“I’ve nothing against him—­except that I’ve never liked him.”

“What do you know about him?  When did you ever see him?”

“I haven’t seen him for years—­not since Drusilla used to bring him to dances, when we were young girls.  She didn’t like it particularly, but she had to do it because he was her father’s ward and had gone to live with them.  He was uncouth—­aggressive.  Wasn’t he a foundling, or a street Arab, or something like that?  He certainly seemed so.  He wasn’t a bit—­civilized.  And once he—­he said something—­he almost insulted me.  You wouldn’t take his money now, papa?”

There was no answer.  He breathed gently.  She spoke more forcibly.

“Papa, you wouldn’t let a stranger pay your debts?”

He continued to breathe gently, his eyes closed, the long black lashes curling on his cheek.

“Papa, darling,” she cried, “I’ll help you.  I’ll take everything on myself.  I’ll find a way—­somehow.  Only, don’t do this.”

He stirred, and murmured sleepily.

“You attend to your wedding, dear.  That’ll be quite enough for you to look after.”

“But I can’t have a wedding if Mr. Davenant has to pay for it.  Don’t you see?  I can’t be married at all.”

When he made no response to this shot, she understood finally that he meant to let the subject drop.

VII

It was in the nature of a relief to Olivia Guion when, on the following day, her father was too ill to go to his office.  A cold, caused by the exposure of two nights previous, and accompanied by a rising temperature, kept him confined to his room, though not to bed.  The occurrence, by maintaining the situation where it was, rendered it impossible to take any irretrievable step that day.  This was so much gain.

She had slept little; she had passed most of the night in active and, as it seemed to her, lucid thinking.  Among the points clearest to her was the degree to which she herself was involved in the present business.  In a measure, the transfer of a large sum of money from Peter Davenant to her father would be an incident more vital to her than to any one else, since she more than any one else must inherit its moral effects.  While she was at a loss to see what the man could claim from them in return for his generosity, she was convinced that his exactions would be not unconnected with herself.  If, on the other hand, he demanded nothing, then the lifelong obligation in the way of gratitude that must thus be imposed on her would be the most intolerable thing of all.  Better any privation than the incurring of such a debt—­a debt that would cover everything she was or could become.  Its magnitude would fill her horizon; she must live henceforth in the world it made, her very personality would turn into a thing of confused origin, sprung, it was true, from Henry and Carlotta Guion in the first place, but taking a second lease