Coming over to meet me with an uncertain step, he said: 

“Old Conrad was for keeping me in bed, but I couldn’t take rest without putting a sight on you.”

After that, and some plain speech out of the primitive man he always was and will be (about it’s being good for a woman to have children because it saved her from “losing her stomach” over imaginary grievances), he led me, with the same half-contemptuous tenderness which he used to show to my mother, back to the house and into the drawing-room.

Alma and her mother were there, the one writing at a desk, the other knitting on the sofa, and they rose as my father entered, but he waved them back to their places.

“Set down, ma’am.  Take your seat, mother.  I’m only here for a minute to talk to my gel about her great reception.”

“Reception?” said Alma.

“Hasn’t she told you about it?” he said, and being answered that I had not, he gave a rough outline of his project, whereupon Alma, whose former attitude towards my father had changed to one of flattery and subservience, lifted her hands and cried: 

“How splendid!  Such an inspiration!  Only think, my love, you were to be kept bright and cheerful, and what could be better for that purpose?”

In the torment of my soul I urged one objection after another—­it would be expensive, we could not afford it.

“Who asks you to afford it?  It’s my affair, isn’t it?” said my father.

I was unwell, and therefore unable to undertake the hard work of such an entertainment—­but that was the worst of excuses, for Alma jumped in with an offer of assistance.

“My dearest child,” she said, “you know how happy I shall be to help you.  In fact, I’ll do all the work and you shall have all the glory.”

“There you are, then,” cried my father, slapping me on the shoulder, and then, turning to Alma, he told her to set to work without a day’s delay.

“Let everything be done correct even if it costs me a bit of money.”

“Yes, sir.”

“A rael big thing, ma’am, such as nobody has ever seen before.”

“Yes indeed, sir.”

“Ask all the big people on the island—­Nessy MacLeod shall send you a list of them.”

“I will, sir.”

“That’ll do for the present—­I guess I must be going now, or old Conrad will be agate of me.  So long, gel, so long.”

I was silenced, I was helpless, I was ashamed.

I did not know then, what now I know, that, besides the desire of celebrating the forthcoming birth of an heir, my father had another and still more secret object—­that of throwing dust in the eyes of his advocates, bankers, and insular councillors, who (having expected him to make money for them by magic) were beginning to whisper that all was not well with his financial schemes.

I did not know then, what now I know, that my father was at that moment the most tragic figure in Ellan except myself, and that, shattered in health and shaken in fortune, he was indulging in this wild extravagance equally to assert his solvency and to gratify his lifelong passion under the very wing of Death.