“No, no, dear.  I know that you mean what you say, but I have seen something of the world, and I know that such arrangements never answer.  There cannot be two masters in a house, and yet at my age my freedom is very necessary to me.”

“But you would be completely free.”

“No, dear, you cannot be that if you are a guest in another man’s house.  Can you suggest no other alternative?”

“That we remain with you.”

“No, no.  That is out of the question.  Mrs. Westmacott herself says that a woman’s first duty is to marry.  Marriage, however, should be an equal partnership, as she points out.  I should wish you both to marry, but still I should like a suggestion from you, Clara, as to what I should do.”

“But there is no hurry, papa.  Let us wait.  I do not intend to marry yet.”

Doctor Walker looked disappointed.  “Well, Clara, if you can suggest nothing, I suppose that I must take the initiative myself,” said he.

“Then what do you propose, papa?” She braced herself as one who sees the blow which is about to fall.

He looked at her and hesitated.  “How like your poor dear mother you are, Clara!” he cried.  “As I looked at you then it was as if she had come back from the grave.”  He stooped towards her and kissed her.  “There, run away to your sister, my dear, and do not trouble yourself about me.  Nothing is settled yet, but you will find that all will come right.”

Clara went upstairs sad at heart, for she was sure now that what she had feared was indeed about to come to pass, and that her father was going to take Mrs. Westmacott to be his wife.  In her pure and earnest mind her mother’s memory was enshrined as that of a saint, and the thought that any one should take her place seemed a terrible desecration.  Even worse, however, did this marriage appear when looked at from the point of view of her father’s future.  The widow might fascinate him by her knowledge of the world, her dash, her strength, her unconventionality—­ all these qualities Clara was willing to allow her—­but she was convinced that she would be unendurable as a life companion.  She had come to an age when habits are not lightly to be changed, nor was she a woman who was at all likely to attempt to change them.  How would a sensitive man like her father stand the constant strain of such a wife, a woman who was all decision, with no softness, and nothing soothing in her nature?  It passed as a mere eccentricity when they heard of her stout drinking, her cigarette smoking, her occasional whiffs at a long clay pipe, her horsewhipping of a drunken servant, and her companionship with the snake Eliza, whom she was in the habit of bearing about in her pocket.  All this would become unendurable to her father when his first infatuation was past.  For his own sake, then, as well as for her mother’s memory, this match must be prevented.  And yet how powerless she was to prevent it!  What could she do?  Could Harold aid her?  Perhaps.  Or Ida?  At least she would tell her sister and see what she could suggest.