The young artist’s declaration, strange to say, brought no angry response from Stephen Foster.  For an instant the hard lines on his face melted away, and there was a gleam of something closely akin to admiration in his eyes; he actually made a half-movement to hold out his hand, but as quickly withdrew it.  He turned and opened the door.

“Is this your last word?” he asked from the threshold.

“That rests with you.  I cannot retreat from my position.  Should I renounce your daughter, after winning her heart, I would deserve to be called—­”

“Very well, sir,” interrupted Stephen Foster.  “I shall know what measures to take in the future.  Forewarned is forearmed.  And, by the way, to save you the trouble of hanging about Strand-on-the-Green, I may tell you that I have sent my daughter out of town on a visit.”

With that parting shot he went down the short flight of steps, and passed into the street.  Jack closed the door savagely, and began to walk up and down the studio, as restless as a caged beast.

“Here’s a nice mess!” he reflected.  “Angry parent, obdurate daughter, and all that sort of thing.  But I rather fancy I scored—­he gained nothing by his visit, and after he thinks the matter over he will probably take a more sensible view of it.  His appeal to me shows clearly that he failed to make Madge yield.”

On the whole, after further consideration, Jack concluded that there was no ground for despondency.  His spirits rose as he recalled the girl’s earnest and loving promises, her assurances of eternal fidelity.

“My darling will be true to me, come what may,” he thought.  “No amount of persuasion or threats can induce her to give me up, and in the end, when Stephen Foster is convinced of that, he will make the best of it and withdraw his objections.  If Madge has been sent out of town, she went against her will.  But, of course, she will manage to let me hear from her.”

Jack sat down to his desk, intending to write a letter to a friend in Paris, a well-to-do artist who lived in the neighborhood of the Pare Monceaux.  He held his pen undecidedly for a moment, and then leaned back in his chair with a puzzled countenance.

“By Jove, it’s queer,” he muttered; “but Stephen Foster’s voice was awfully familiar.  We never met before, and I never laid eyes on the man, so far as I can remember.  I am mistaken.  It is only a fancy.  No—­I have it!  He suggests M. Felix Marchand—­there is something in common in their speech, though it is very slight.  What an odd coincidence!”

That it could possibly be more than a coincidence did not occur to Jack, and he would have laughed the idea to scorn.  He dismissed the matter from his mind, wrote and posted the letter, and then went off to dine by appointment with Victor Nevill.

There was no word from Madge the next day, and it is to be feared that Jack’s work suffered in consequence, and that Alphonse found him slightly irritable.  But on the following morning a letter came in the well-known handwriting.  It was very brief.  The girl was not out of town, but was stopping near Regent’s Park with an elderly maternal aunt who lived in Portland Terrace, and was addicted to the companionship of cockatoos and cats, not to speak of a brace of overfed, half-blind pugs.