‘That seems very hard, papa.’

‘I thought you knew my opinion of Mr. Egerton.’

‘It would change if you knew more of him.’

’Never.  I might like him very well as a member of society; I could never approve of him as a son-in-law.  Besides, I have other views for you—­long-cherished views—­which I hope you will not disappoint.’

’I don’t know what you mean by that, papa; but I know that I can never marry any one except Mr. Egerton.  I may never marry at all, if you refuse to change your decision upon this subject; but I am quite sure I shall never be the wife of any one else.’

Her father looked at her angrily.  That hard expression about the lower part of the face, which I had noticed in his portrait and in himself from the very first, was intensified to-day.  He looked a stern resolute man, whose will was not to be moved by a daughter’s pleading.

‘We shall see about that by and by,’ he said.  ’I am not going to have my plans defeated by a girl’s folly.  I have been a very indulgent father, but I am not a weak or yielding one.  You will have to obey me, Milly, or you will find yourself a substantial sufferer by and by.’

’If you mean that you will disinherit me, papa, I am quite willing that you should do that,’ Milly answered resolutely.  ’Perhaps you think Mr. Egerton cares for my fortune.  Put him to the test, papa.  Tell him that you will give me nothing, and that be may take me on that condition.’

Augusta Darrell turned upon her stepdaughter with a sudden look in her face that was almost like a flame.

‘Do you think him so disinterested?’ she asked.  ’Have you such supreme confidence in his affection?’

‘Perfect confidence.’

’And you do not believe that mercenary considerations have any weight with him?  You do not think that he is eager to repair his shattered fortunes?  You think him all truth and devotion?  He, a blase man of the world, of three-and-thirty; a man who has outlived the possibility of anything like a real attachment; a man who lavished his whole stock of feeling upon the one attachment of his youth.’

She said all this very quietly, but with a suppressed bitterness.  I think it needed all her powers of restraint to keep her from some passionate outburst that would have betrayed the secret of her life.  I was now more than ever convinced that she had known Angus Egerton in the past, and that she had loved him.

‘You see, I am not afraid of his being put to the test,’ Milly said proudly.  ’I know he loved some one very dearly, a long time ago.  He spoke of that yesterday.  He told me that his old love had died out of his heart years ago.’

‘He told you a lie,’ cried Mrs. Darrell.  ’Such things never die.  They sleep, perhaps—­like the creatures that hide themselves in the ground and lie torpid all the winter—­but with one breath of the past they flame into life again.’