She made as though she would pass him, but he managed to bar her way.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Miss Guion.  If he’s not well it’ll only upset him.  Why not let everything be just as it is?  You won’t regret it a year hence—­believe me.  In nine things out of ten you’d know better than I; but this is the tenth thing, in which I know better than you.  Why not trust me—­and let me have a free hand?”

“I’m afraid I must go to my father.  If you’ll be kind enough to wait, I’ll come back and tell you what he says.  Then we shall know.  Will you please let me pass?”

He moved to one side.  He thought again of the woman in the English law-court.  It was like this that she walked from the dock—­erect, unflinching, graceful, with eyes fixed straight before her, as though she saw something in the air.

He watched her cross the hall to the foot of the staircase.  There she paused pensively.  In a minute or two she came back to the sitting-room door.

“If it should be like—­like Jack Berrington,” she said, from the threshold, with a kind of concentrated quiet in her manner, “then—­what you suggested—­would be more out of the question than ever.”

“I don’t see that,” he returned, adopting her own tone.  “I should think it would be just the other way.”

She shook her head.

“There are a lot of points of view that you haven’t seen yet,” he persisted.  “I could put some of them before you if you’d give me time.”

“It would be no use doing that.  I should never believe anything but that we, my father and I, should bear the responsibilities of our own acts.”

“You’ll think differently,” he began, “when you’ve looked at the thing all round; and then—­”

But before he could complete his sentence she had gone.

* * * * *

Having seen her go up-stairs, he waited in some uncertainty.  When fifteen or twenty minutes had gone by and she did not return, he decided to wait no longer.  Picking up his hat and stick from the chair on which he had laid them, he went out by the French window, making his way to the gate across the lawn.

VIII

Finding the door of her father’s room ajar, Miss Guion pushed it open and went in.

Wearing a richly quilted dressing-gown, with cuffs and rolled collar of lavender silk, he lay asleep in the chaise-longue, a tan-colored rug across his feet.  On a table at his left stood a silver box containing cigars, a silver ash-tray, a silver match-box, and a small silver lamp burning with a tiny flame.  Each piece was engraved with his initials and a coat-of-arms.  On his right there was an adjustable reading-stand, holding an open copy of a recent English review.  One hand, adorned with an elaborately emblazoned seal-ring, hung heavily toward the floor; a cigar that had gone out was still between the fingers.  His head, resting on a cushion of violet brocade, had fallen slightly to one side.