“I don’t understand,” and Barbara’s curiosity overcame her determination not to speak.

“Don’t you remember the picture of the man who was called upon to take his late fiancee out to dinner?”

The awful silence with which this remark was received put an end to further efforts at humor.

The dinner was probably the most painful experience in their lives.  Barbara had come to it softened and ready to meet him half way.  The right kind of humility in Monty would have found her plastic.  But she had very definite and rigid ideas of his duty in the premises.  And Monty was too simple minded to seem to suffer, and much too flippant to understand.  It was plain to each that the other did not expect to talk, but they both realized that they owed a duty to appearances and to their hostess.  Through two courses, at least, there was dead silence between them.  It seemed as though every eye in the room were on them and every mind were speculating.  At last, in sheer desperation, Barbara turned to him with the first smile he had seen on her face in days.  There was no smile in her eyes, however, and Monty understood.

“We might at least give out the impression that we are friends,” she said quietly.

“More easily said than done,” he responded gloomily.

“They are all looking at us and wondering.”

“I don’t blame them.”

“We owe something to Mrs. Dan, I think.”

“I know.”

Barbara uttered some inanity whenever she caught any one looking in their direction, but Brewster seemed not to hear.  At length he cut short some remark of hers about the weather.

“What nonsense this is, Barbara,” he said.  “With any one else I would chuck the whole game, but with you it is different.  I don’t know what I have done, but I am sorry.  I hope you’ll forgive me.”

“Your assurance is amusing, to say the least.”

“But I am sure.  I know this quarrel is something we’ll laugh over.  You keep forgetting that we are going to be married some day.”

A new light came into Barbara’s eyes.  “You forget that my consent may be necessary,” she said.

“You will be perfectly willing when the time comes.  I am still in the fight and eventually you will come to my way of thinking.”

“Oh!  I see it now,” said Barbara, and her blood was up.  “You mean to force me to it.  What you did for father—­”

Brewster glowered at her, thinking that he had misunderstood.  “What do you mean?” he said.

“He has told me all about that wretched bank business.  But poor father thought you quite disinterested.  He did not see the little game behind your melodrama.  He would have torn up your check on the instant if he had suspected you were trying to buy his daughter.”

“Does your father believe that?” asked Brewster.

“No, but I see it all now.  His persistence and yours—­you were not slow to grasp the opportunity offered.”