’Now, Roger, I’ve listened to you long enough.  If you’ve nothing better to do with your time than to talk about my daughter, I have.  When you come back it will be time enough to enquire how far your father would approve of such an engagement.’

’He himself urged it upon me the other day—­but then I was in despair—­ I thought it was too late.’

’And what means you are likely to have of maintaining a wife,—­I always thought that point was passed too lightly over when you formed your hurried engagement to Cynthia.  I’m not mercenary,—­Molly has some money independently of me,—­that she by the way knows nothing of,—­not much; —­and I can allow her something.  But all these things must be left till your return.’

‘Then you sanction my attachment?’

’I don’t know what you mean by sanctioning it.  I can’t help it.  I suppose losing one’s daughter is a necessary evil.  Still,’—­seeing the disappointed expression on Roger’s face—­’it is but fair to you to say I’d rather give my child,—­my only child, remember!—­to you, than to any man in the world!’

‘Thank you!’ said Roger, shaking hands with Mr. Gibson, almost against the will of the latter.  ‘And I may see her, just once, before I go?’

‘Decidedly not.  There I come in as doctor as well as father.  No!’

‘But you will take a message, at any rate?’

’To my wife and to her conjointly.  I will not separate them.  I will not in the slightest way be a go-between.’

‘Very well,’ said Roger.  ’Tell them both as strongly as you can how I regret your prohibition.  I see I must submit.  But if I don’t come back, I’ll haunt you for having been so cruel.’

’Come, I like that.  Give me a wise man of science in love!  No one beats him in folly.  Good-by.’

‘Good-by, You will see Molly this afternoon!’

’To be sure.  And you will see your father.  But I don’t heave such portentous sighs at the thought.’

Mr. Gibson gave Roger’s message to his wife and to Molly that evening at dinner.  It was but what the latter had expected, after all her father had said of the very great danger of infection; but now that her expectation came in the shape of a final decision, it took away her appetite.  She submitted in silence; but her observant father noticed that after this speech of his, she only played with the food on her plate, and concealed a good deal of it under her knife and fork.

‘Lover versus father!’ thought he, half sadly.  ‘Lover wins.’  And he, too, became indifferent to all that remained of his dinner.  Mrs Gibson pattered on; and nobody listened.

The day of Roger’s departure came.  Molly tried hard to forget it in working away at a cushion she was preparing as a present to Cynthia; people did worsted-work in those days.  One, two, three.  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven; all wrong; she was thinking of something else, and had to unpick it.  It was a rainy day, too; and Mrs. Gibson, who had planned to go out and pay some calls, had to stay indoors.  This made her restless and fidgety.  She kept going backwards and forwards to different windows in the drawing-room to look at the weather, as if she imagined that while it rained at one window, it might be fine weather at another.