“Well?” questioned Florence, and the pupils of her brown eyes widened.

Scotty flushed, but memory of the impassive Alec waiting below returned, and his anger arose.

“How much longer are you going to keep that negro waiting?” he demanded.  “He has been here an hour already by the clock.”

A look of almost childlike surprise came over the face of the girl, an expression implying that the other was making a mountain out of a mole-hill.  “I really don’t know,” she said.

Scotty took a chair, and ran his long fingers through his hair perplexedly.  “Florence,” he said, “at times you are simply maddening; and I do not want to be angry with you.  Alec says he is waiting for an answer.  What is it an answer to, please?  It is my right to know.”

Again there was a pause, so long that Scotty expected unqualified refusal:  and again he was disappointed.  Without a word, the girl removed the note from the envelope and passed it over to him.

Scotty read it and returned the sheet.

“You haven’t written an answer yet, I judge?”

“No.”

The Englishman’s fingers were tapping nervously on the edge of the chair-seat.

“I wish you to decline, then.”

The childish expression left the girl’s eyes, the listlessness left her attitude.

“Why, if I may ask?” A challenge was in the query.

Scotty arose, and for a half-minute walked back and forth across the disordered room.  At last he stopped, facing his daughter.

“The reason, first of all, is that I do not like this man Sidwell in any particular.  If you respect my wishes you will have nothing to do with him or with any of his class in future.  The second reason is that it is high time some one was watching the kind of affairs you attend.”  The speaker looked down on the girl sternly.  “I think it unnecessary to suggest that neither of us desires a repetition of last night’s experience.”

Of a sudden, her face very red, Florence was likewise upon her feet.  In the irony of circumstances, Sidwell could not have had a more powerful ally.  Her decision was instantly formed.

“I quite agree with you about the incident of last evening,” she flamed.  “As to who shall be my associates, and where I shall go, however, I am of age—­” and she started to leave the room.

But preventing, Scotty was between her and the door.  “Florence,”—­his face was very white and his voice trembled,—­“we may as well have an understanding now as to defer it.  Maybe, as you say, I have no authority over you longer; but at least I can make a request.  You know that I love you, that I would not ask anything which was not for your good.  Knowing this, won’t you at my request cease going with this man?  Won’t you refuse his invitation for to-night?”

Nearer than ever before in his life was the Englishman at that moment to grasping the secret of control of this child of many moods.  Had he but learned it a few years, even a few months, sooner—­But again was the satire of fate manifest, the same irony which, jealously withholding the rewards of labor, keeps the student at his desk, the laborer at his bench, until the worse than useless prizes flutter about like Autumn leaves.