Janet dismissed the men-servants.  She was quite colourless.

‘We have been stopped in the doorway,’ I said.

She answered:  ‘I wish it could have been prevented.’

‘You take it on yourself, then?’

She was inaudible.

‘My dear Janet, you call Riversley my home, don’t you?’

‘It is yours.’

‘Do you intend to keep up this hateful feud now my grandfather is dead?’

‘No, Harry, not I.’

’Did you give orders to stop my father from entering the house and grounds?’

‘I did.’

‘You won’t have him here?’

‘Dear Harry, I hoped he would not come just yet.’

‘But you gave the orders?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re rather incomprehensible, my dear Janet.’

‘I wish you could understand me, Harry.’

‘You arm your servants against him!’

‘In a few days—­’ she faltered.

‘You insult him and me now,’ said I, enraged at the half indication of her relenting, which spoiled her look of modestly—­resolute beauty, and seemed to show that she meant to succumb without letting me break her.  ‘You are mistress of the place.’

‘I am.  I wish I were not.’

‘You are mistress of Riversley, and you refuse to let my father come in!’

‘While I am the mistress, yes.’

’Anywhere but here, Harry!  If he will see me or aunty, if he will kindly appoint any other place, we will meet him, we shall be glad.’

‘I request you to let him enter the house.  Do you consent or not?’

‘He was refused once at these doors.  Do you refuse him a second time?’

‘I do.’

‘You mean that?’

‘I am obliged to.’

‘You won’t yield a step to me?’

‘I cannot.’

The spirit of an armed champion was behind those mild features, soft almost to supplication to me, that I might know her to be under a constraint.  The nether lip dropped in breathing, the eyes wavered:  such was her appearance in open war with me, but her will was firm.

Of course I was not so dense as to be unable to perceive her grounds for refusing.

She would not throw the burden on her grandada, even to propitiate me—­ the man she still loved.

But that she should have a reason, and think it good, in spite of me, and cling to it, defying me, and that she should do hurt to a sentient human creature, who was my father, for the sake of blindly obeying to the letter the injunction of the dead, were intolerable offences to me and common humanity.  I, for my own part, would have forgiven her, as I congratulated myself upon reflecting.  It was on her account—­to open her mind, to enlighten her concerning right and wrong determination, to bring her feelings to bear upon a crude judgement—­that I condescended to argue the case.  Smarting with admiration, both of the depths and shallows of her character,