“But what are you going to do?” her father asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!  But I pledged my word!  You don’t understand, I am in honour bound.”

Julia forbore to make and comment on her father’s notion of honour; indeed, it struck her as almost pathetic in its grotesqueness and certainly very characteristic of the Polkingtons.

“Cross paid five pounds for the streaked daffodil,” the Captain went on to say, believing that he was stating the case with incontrovertible plainness, “and if he does not have the true bulb he must have the money back; otherwise he will, with justice, say he has been cheated, for I guaranteed the thing.”

“He paid five pounds for a speculation,” Julia said; “your guarantee was nothing, and though he may have asked for it, it was just a form and did not count one way or the other.  He knew there was a chance that you had come by the true bulb somehow and so had it to sell; he risked five pounds on that—­and lost it.”

Captain Polkington looked bewildered.  “He paid five pounds for the bulb,” he persisted; “he said it was worth no more to him.”

“Very likely not, if he could get it for that,” Julia said; “but if he could have been sure of it, it would have been worth two hundred pounds.”

“Two hundred!” Captain Polkington gasped, turning rather white.

Julia nodded.  “With my guarantee,” she said.  “You had not got that; I suppose you let him see it when you wrote first so he knew that, though you might have the real bulb, you were not in a position to sell it well.”

The Captain flushed as suddenly as he had paled.  “You think he thought I had not come by it honestly, that I had no right in my daughter’s affairs?”

“I don’t see it matters what he thought,” Julia answered, taking up the dishes.  “He risked his money, and lost it, knowing very well what he did; he does not mind doing business in that way; I don’t admire it myself, but I guessed he would do it when I first made his acquaintance.”

“You ——­” the Captain said.

“I have nothing to do with it, and shall have nothing.”

“But the money must be paid; it is a debt of honour; I must clear myself.”

Julia shrugged her shoulders.

“You do not wish me cleared?” her father demanded haughtily.

“Paying the five pounds would not clear you,” she said; “neither that nor anything else.  No, I am not going to pay it; I don’t feel any obligation in the matter.  If Mr. Cross goes in for those sort of dealings he must put up with the consequence, and I am afraid you must, too.”  And with that she went away.