He glanced at Cynthia again, this time appraisingly.  She had dried her eyes, but she made no effort to speak.  After all, she would make such a wife for his son as few men possessed.  He thought of Sarah Hollingsworth.  She had been a good woman, but there had been many times when he had deplored—­especially in his travels the lack of other qualities in his wife.  Cynthia, he thought, had these qualities,—­so necessary for the wife of one who would succeed to power—­though whence she had got them Isaac Worthington could not imagine.  She would become a personage; she was a woman of whom they had no need to be ashamed at home or abroad.  Having completed these reflections, he broke the silence.

“I am sorry that you should have been misled into thinking such a thing as you have expressed, Cynthia,” he said, “but I believe that I can understand something of the feelings which prompted you.  It is natural that you should have a resentment against me after everything that has happened.  It is perhaps natural, too, that I should lose my temper under the circumstances.  Let us forget it.  And I trust that in the future we shall grow into the mutual respect and affection which our nearer relationship will demand.”

He rose, and took up his hat, and Cynthia rose too.  There was something very fine, he thought, about her carriage and expression as she stood in front of him.

“There is my hand,” he said,—­“will you take it?”

“I will take it,” Cynthia answered, “because you are Bob’s father.”

And then Mr. Worthington went away.

CHAPTER XX

I am able to cite one notable instance, at least, to disprove the saying a part of which is written above, and I have yet to hear of a case in which a gentleman ever hesitated a single instant on account of the first letter of a lady’s last name.  I know, indeed, of an occasion when locomotives could not go fast enough, when thirty miles an hour seemed a snail’s pace to a young main who sat by the open window of a train that crept northward on a certain hazy September morning up the beautiful valley of a broad river which we know.

It was after three o’clock before he caught sight of the familiar crest of Farewell Mountain, and the train ran into Harwich.  How glad he was to see everybody there, whether he knew them or not!  He came near hugging the conductor of the Truro accommodation; who, needless to say, did not ask him for a ticket, or even a pass.  And then the young man went forward and almost shook the arms off of the engineer and the fireman, and climbed into the cab, and actually drove the engine himself as far as Brampton, where it arrived somewhat ahead of schedule, having taken some of the curves and bridges at a speed a little beyond the law.  The engineer was richer by five dollars, and the son of a railroad president is a privileged character, anyway.