“I want,” and Philip spoke very gently—­“I want, Mrs. Mavick, permission to see your daughter.”

“Ah!  I thought in Rivervale, Mr. Burnett, that you were a gentleman.  You presume upon my invitation to this house, in an underhand way, to—­What right have you?”

Mrs. Mavick was so beside herself that she could hardly speak.  The lines in her face deepened into wrinkles and scowls.  There was something malevolent and mean in it.  Philip was astonished at the transformation.  And she looked old and ugly in her passion.

“You!” she repeated.

“It is only this, Mrs. Mavick,” and Philip spoke calmly, though his blood was boiling at her insulting manner—­“it is only this—­I love your daughter.”

“And you have told her this?”

“No, never, never a word.”

“Does she know anything of this absurd, this silly attempt?”

“I am afraid not.”

“Ah!  Then you have spared yourself one humiliation.  My daughter’s affections are not likely to be placed where her parents do not approve.  Her mother is her only confidante.  I can tell you, Mr. Burnett, and when you are over this delusion you will thank me for being so plain with you, my daughter would laugh at the idea of such a proposal.  But I will not have her annoyed by impecunious aspirants.”

“Madam!” cried Philip, rising, with a flushed face, and then he remembered that he was talking to Evelyn’s mother, and uttered no other word.

“This is ended.”  And then, with a slight change of manner, she went on:  “You must see how impossible it is.  You are a man of honor.

“I should like to think well of you.  I shall trust to your honor that you will never try, by letter or otherwise, to hold any communication with her.”

“I shall obey you,” said Philip, quite stiffly, “because you are her mother.  But I love her, and I shall always love her.”

Mrs. Mavick did not condescend to any reply to this, but she made a cold bow of dismissal and turned away from him.  He left the house and walked away, scarcely knowing in which direction he went, anger for a time being uppermost in his mind, chagrin and defeat following, and with it the confused feeling of a man who has passed through a cyclone and been landed somewhere amid the scattered remnants of his possessions.

As he strode away he was intensely humiliated.  He had been treated like an inferior.  He had voluntarily put himself in a position to be insulted.  Contempt had been poured upon him, his feelings had been outraged, and there was no way in which he could show his resentment.  Presently, as his anger subsided, he began to look at the matter more sanely.  What had happened?  He had made an honorable proposal.  But what right had he to expect that it would be favorably considered?  He knew all along that it was most unlikely that Mrs. Mavick would entertain for a moment idea of such a match.  He knew what would be the unanimous opinion of society about it.  In the case of any other young man aspiring to the hand of a rich girl, he knew very well what he should have thought.