“Yes,” said Bob.  She was making it terribly hard for him, sparing indeed neither herself nor him.

“If you come here to see me, it will cause a quarrel between you and your father.  I—­I cannot do that.”

“There is nothing wrong in my seeing you,” said Bob, stoutly; “if he cares to quarrel with me for that, I cannot help it.  If the people I choose for my friends are good people, he has no right to an objection, even though he is my father.”

Cynthia had never come so near real admiration for him as at that moment.

“No, Bob, you must not come,” she said.  “I will not have you quarrel with him on my account.”

“Then I will quarrel with him on my own account,” he had answered.  “Good-by.  You may expect me this day week.”

He went into the hall to put on his overcoat.  Cynthia stood still on the spot of the carpet where he had left her.  He put his head in at the door.

“This day week,” he said.

“Bob, you must not come,” she answered.  But the street door closed after him as he spoke.

CHAPTER IX

“You must not come.”  Had Cynthia made the prohibition strong enough?  Ought she not to have said, “If you do come, I will not see you?” Her knowledge of the motives of the men and women in the greater world was largely confined to that which she had gathered from novels—­not trashy novels, but those by standard authors of English life.  And many another girl of nineteen has taken a novel for a guide when she has been suddenly confronted with the first great problem outside of her experience.  Somebody has declared that there are only seven plots in the world.  There are many parallels in English literature to Cynthia’s position,—­so far as she was able to define that position,—­the wealthy young peer, the parson’s or physician’s daughter, and the worldly, inexorable parents who had other plans.

Cynthia was, of course, foolish.  She would not look ahead, yet there was the mirage in the sky when she allowed herself to dream.  It can truthfully be said that she was not in love with Bob Worthington.  She felt, rather than knew, that if love came to her the feeling she had for Jethro Bass—­strong though that was—­would be as nothing to it.  The girl felt the intensity of her nature, and shrank from it when her thoughts ran that way, for it frightened her.

“Mrs. Merrill” she said, a few days later, when she found herself alone with that lady, “you once told me you would have no objection if a friend came to see me here.”

“None whatever, my dear,” answered Mrs. Merrill.  “I have asked you to have your friends here.”

Mrs. Merrill knew that a young man had called on Cynthia.  The girls had discussed the event excitedly, had teased Cynthia about it; they had discovered, moreover, that the young man had not been a tiller of the soil or a clerk in a country store.  Ellen, with the enthusiasm of her race, had painted him in glowing colors—­but she had neglected to read the name on his card.