A heavy step sounded on the verandah without.

“There’s father!” she cried vividly, jumping to her feet and running to the door, while Minnie, in a nervous bewilderment, ran off upstairs to her room.  Eunice flung the door open.  “Well, father, we’ve got Dan back again.”  And at a look of quiet question in his eye she hurried on:  “His engagement’s broken, and he’s come up here to tell us, and brought Mr. Boardman along to help.”

“Where is he?” asked the father, with his ruminant quiet, pulling off first one sleeve of his overcoat, and pausing for Eunice’s answer before he pulled off the other.

XLVI.

“He’s up in his room, resting from the effort.”  She laughed nervously, and her father made no comment.  He took off his articles, and then went creaking upstairs to Dan’s room.  But at the door he paused, with his hand on the knob, and turned away to his own room without entering.

Dan must have heard him; in a few minutes he came to him.

“Well, Dan,” said his father, shaking hands.

“I suppose Eunice has told you?  Well, I want to tell you why it happened.”

There was something in his father that always steadied Dan and kept him to the point.  He now put the whole case fairly and squarely, and his candour and openness seemed to him to react and characterise his conduct throughout.  He did not realise that this was not so till his father said at the close, with mild justice, “You were to blame for letting the thing run on so at loose ends.”

“Yes, of course,” said Dan, seeing that he was.  “But there was no intention of deceiving any one of bad faith—­”

“Of course not.”

“I thought it could be easily arranged whenever it came to the point.”

“If you’d been older, you wouldn’t have thought that.  You had women to deal with on both sides.  But if it’s all over, I’m not sorry.  I always admired Miss Pasmer, but I’ve been more and more afraid you were not suited to each other.  Your mother doesn’t know you’re here?”

“No, sir, I suppose not.  Do you think it will distress her?”

“How did your sisters take it?”

Dan gave a rueful laugh.  “It seemed to be rather a popular move with them.”

“I will see your mother first,” said the father.

He left them when they went into the library after supper, and a little later Dan and Eunice left Boardman in charge of Minnie there.

He looked after their unannounced withdrawal in comic consciousness.  “It’s no use pretending that I’m not a pretty large plurality here,” he said to Minnie.

“Oh, I’m so glad you came!” she cried, with a kindness which was as real as if it had been more sincere.

“Do you think mother will feel it much?” asked Dan anxiously, as he went upstairs with Eunice.

“Well, she’ll hate to lose a correspondent—­such a regular one,” said Eunice, and the affair being so far beyond any other comment, she laughed the rest of the way to their mother’s room.