“And if she will not go with you?” asked Mrs. Banks.

“She must,” Frank returned.

“And still, if she will not go?”

“Then we shall bring an action against you for abducting her.”

Mrs. Banks smiled gently and pursed her mouth “To avoid a scandal?” she asked.

“If you persist in your absurd demands, there will be a scandal in any case,” Frank replied curtly.

“I suppose my wishes don’t count at all?” Brenda put in.

“Obviously they don’t,” Frank said.

“But, look here, father,” Brenda continued, turning to old Jervaise; “why do you want me to come back?  We’ve never got on, I and the rest of you. Why can’t you let me go and be done with it?”

Jervaise fidgeted uneasily and looked up with a touch of appeal at his son.  He had begun to mumble some opening when Frank interposed.

“Because we won’t,” he said, “and that’s the end of it.  There’s nothing more to be said.  I’ve told you precisely how the case stands.  Either you come back with us without a fuss, or we shall begin an action at once.”

I know now that Frank Jervaise was merely bluffing, and that they could have had no case, since Brenda was over eighteen, and was not being detained against her will.  But none of us, probably not even old Jervaise himself, knew enough of the law to question the validity of the threat.

Little Mrs. Banks, however, was not depending on her legal knowledge to defeat her enemies.  What woman would?  She had been exchanging glances with her husband during the brief interval in which she had entrusted a minor plea to her junior, and I suppose she, now, considered herself free to produce her trump card.  Banks had turned his back on the room—­perhaps the first time he had ever so slighted his landlord and owner—­and was leaning his forehead against the glass of the window.  His attitude was that of a man who had no further interest in such trivialities as this bickering and scheming.  Perhaps he was dimly struggling to visualise what life in Canada might mean for him?

His wife’s eyes were still shining with the zest of her present encounter.  She was too engrossed by that to consider just then the far heavier task she would presently have to undertake.  She shrugged her shoulders and made a gesture with her hands that implied the throwing of all further responsibility upon her antagonists.  “If you will have it,” she seemed to say, “you must take the consequences.”  And old Jervaise, at all events, foresaw what was coming, and at that eleventh hour made one last effort to avert it.

“You know, Frank...” he began, but Mrs. Banks interrupted him.

“It is useless, Mr. Jervaise,” she said.  “Mr. Frank has been making love to my daughter and she has shown him plainly how she despises him.  After that he will not listen to you.  He seeks his revenge.  It is the manner of your family to make love in that way.”