He was relieved from this tedium by another summons to the office.  Fortified with a glass of good wine, he returned to the encounter, inwardly calling upon his gods to direct him how to meet it.  He found poor old Father Pennycuick aged ten years in the hour since he had seen him last.  But he still stood in massive dignity, a true son of his old race.

“Well, Mr Carey,” said he, “I have had a great many troubles of late, sir, but never one like this.  I thought that losing money—­the fruits of a lifetime of hard work—­was a thing to fret over; and then, again, I’ve thought that money’s no consequence so long as you’ve got your children alive and well—­that that was everything.  I know better now.  I know there’s things may happen to a man worse than death—­worse than losing everything belonging to him, no matter what it is.  When that child was a little thing, she had an illness, and the doctors gave her up.  Two nights her mother and I sat up watching her, expecting every breath to be the last, and broken-hearted was no word for what we felt.  I cried like a calf, and I prayed—­I never prayed like it before or since—­and fools we are to ask the Almighty for we don’t know what!  Now I wish He had taken her.  And I’ve told her so.”

“Then you have been very cruel, Mr Pennycuick,” Guthrie Carey replied sharply—­“and as unjust as cruel.  She has done nothing—­”

“I know what she’s done,” the stern parent interposed.  “I wouldn’t have believed it if anybody else had told me; but I have her own word for it.  And if she has been a liar once, I still know when to believe her.”

“If you will be so good as to tell me what she has said, then I will make my statement.”

The old man put up his hand.

“Don’t perjure yourself,” said he, grimly smiling.  “It is very kind of you to try to let us down easily, but you can spare your breath.  Excuses only make it worse.  There’s nothing to be said for her, and you’ll really oblige me by not going into details.  I only sent for you to make such amends as I can—­to apologise most humbly—­to express my sorrow—­my shame—­my unspeakable humiliation—­that a child of mine—­a Pennycuick—­a girl I thought was nothing if not maidenly and self-respecting, and the very soul of honour and straightness and proper pride—­”

“You speak as if she was not all that now—­”

“Now!—­and done a low, contemptible thing like that!  Oh, I don’t understand it—­I can’t; it’s too monstrous—­except that I have her word for it.  She says she did it, and so there it is.  And, sir, I beg your pardon on behalf of the house that she has disgraced—­the house that reared her and thought her so different—­”

He gulped, coughed, and gave Guthrie a chance to put in a word.

“Mr Pennycuick, the simple fact is that I made love to your daughter—­ "

“Made her an offer of marriage?” snarled the other, wheeling round.