“Hearty thanks for that, Mallard!  We haven’t shaken hands yet, you remember.  Forgive me for treating you so ill.”

He held out his band cordially, and Mallard could not refuse it, though he would rather have thrust his fingers among red coals than feel that hot pressure.

“I believe I can be grateful,” pursued Elgar, in a voice that quivered with transport.  “I will do my best to prove it.”

“Let us speak of things more to the point.  What result do you foresee of this meeting to-morrow!”

The other hesitated.

“I shall ask Cecily when she will marry me.”

“You may do so, of course, but the answer cannot depend upon herself alone.”

“What delay do you think necessary?”

“Until she is of age, and her own mistress,” replied Mallard, with quiet decision.

“Impossible!  What need is there to wait all that time?”

“Why, there is this need, Elgar,” returned the other, more vigorously than he had yet spoken.  “There is need that you should prove to those who desire Miss Doran’s welfare that you are something more than a young fellow fresh from a life of waste and idleness and everything that demonstrates or tends to untrustworthiness.  It seems to me that a couple of years or so is not an over-long time for this, all things considered.”

Elgar kept silent.

“You would have seen nothing objectionable in immediate marriage?” said Mallard.

“It is useless to pretend that I should.”

“Not even from the point of view of Mrs. Lessingham and myself?”

“You yourself have never spoken plainly about such things in my hearing; but I find you in most things a man of your time.  And it doesn’t seem to me that Mrs. Lessingham is exactly conventional in her views.”

“You imagine yourself worthy of such a wife at present?”

“Plainly, I do.  It would be the merest hypocrisy if I said anything else.  If Cecily loves me, my love for her is at least as strong.  If we are equal in that, what else matters?  I am not going to cry Peccavi about the past.  I have lived, and you know what that means in my language.  In what am I inferior as a man to Cecily as a woman?  Would you have me snivel, and talk about my impurity and her angelic qualities?  You know that you would despise me if I did—­or any other man who used the same empty old phrases.”

“I grant you that,” replied Mallard, deliberately.  “I believe I am no more superstitious with regard to these questions than you are, and I want to hear no cant.  Let us take it on more open ground.  Were Cecily Doran my daughter, I would resist her marrying you to the utmost of my power—­not simply because you have lived laxly, but because of my conviction that the part of your life is to be a pattern of the whole.  I have no faith in you—­no faith in your sense of honour, in your stability, not even in your mercy.  Your wife will be, sooner