“So sorry!  Will you let us bide a bit out of the rain?”

The sweet-looking Phoebe dusted them two chairs, and, curtseying, left them in the parlour.

“What a pretty girl!” said Shelton.

“Yes, she’s a pretty girl; half the young fellows are after her, but she won’t leave her father.  Oh, he ’s a charming rascal is that fellow!”

This remark suddenly brought home to Shelton the conviction that he was further than ever from avoiding the necessity for speaking.  He walked over to the window.  The rain was coming down with fury, though a golden line far down the sky promised the shower’s quick end.  “For goodness’ sake,” he thought, “let me say something, however idiotic, and get it over!” But he did not turn; a kind of paralysis had seized on him.

“Tremendous heavy rain!” he said at last; “coming down in waterspouts.”

It would have been just as easy to say:  “I believe your daughter to be the sweetest thing on earth; I love her, and I ’m going to make her happy!” Just as easy, just about the same amount of breath required; but he couldn’t say it!  He watched the rain stream and hiss against the leaves and churn the dust on the parched road with its insistent torrent; and he noticed with precision all the details of the process going on outside how the raindrops darted at the leaves like spears, and how the leaves shook themselves free a hundred times a minute, while little runnels of water, ice-clear, rolled over their edges, soft and quick.  He noticed, too, the mournful head of a sheltering cow that was chewing at the hedge.

Mr. Dennant had not replied to his remark about the rain.  So disconcerting was this silence that Shelton turned.  His future father-in-law, upon his wooden chair, was staring at his well-blacked boots, bending forward above his parted knees, and prodding at the carpet; a glimpse at his face disturbed Shelton’s resolution.  It was not forbidding, stern, discouraging—­not in the least; it had merely for the moment ceased to look satirical.  This was so startling that Shelton lost his chance of speaking.  There seemed a heart to Mr. Dennant’s gravity; as though for once he were looking grave because he felt so.  But glancing up at Shelton, his dry jocosity reappeared at once.

“What a day for ducks!” he said; and again there was unmistakable alarm about the eye.  Was it possible that he, too, dreaded something?

“I can’t express—­” began Shelton hurriedly.

“Yes, it’s beastly to get wet,” said Mr. Dennant, and he sang—­

          “For we can wrestle and fight, my boys,
          And jump out anywhere.”

“You ’ll be with us for that dinner-party next week, eh?  Capital!  There’s the Bishop of Blumenthal and old Sir Jack Buckwell; I must get my wife to put you between them—­”

          “For it’s my delight of a starry night—­”

“The Bishop’s a great anti-divorce man, and old Buckwell ’s been in the court at least twice—­”