Victoria stood before the fire listening to the sound of the wheels gradually growing fainter, and her mind refused to work.  Hanover Street, Mr. Jenney’s farm-house, were unrealities too.  Ten minutes later—­if she had marked the interval—­came the sound of wheels again, this time growing louder.  Then she heard a voice in the hall, her father’s voice.

“Towers, who was that?”

“A young gentleman, sir, who drove home with Miss Victoria.  I didn’t get his name, sir.”

“Has Miss Victoria retired?”

“She’s in the library, sir.  Here are some telegrams, Mr. Flint.”

Victoria heard her father tearing open the telegrams and walking towards the library with slow steps as he read them.  She did not stir from her place before the fire.  She saw him enter and, with a characteristic movement which had become almost habitual of late, crush the telegrams in front of him with both hands.

“Well, Victoria?” he said.

“Well, father?”

It was characteristic of him, too, that he should momentarily drop the conversation, unravel the ball of telegrams, read one, crush them once more,—­a process that seemed to give him relief.  He glanced at his daughter—­she had not moved.  Whatever Mr. Flint’s original character may have been in his long-forgotten youth on the wind-swept hill farm in Truro, his methods of attack lacked directness now; perhaps a long business and political experience were responsible for this trait.

“Your mother didn’t come down to dinner, I suppose.”

“No,” said Victoria.

Simpson tells me the young bull got loose and cut himself badly.  He says it’s the fault of the Eben Fitch you got me to hire.”

“I don’t believe it was Eben’s fault—­Simpson doesn’t like him,” Victoria replied.

“Simpson tells me Fitch drinks.”

“Let a man get a bad name,” said Victoria, “and Simpson will take care that he doesn’t lose it.”  The unexpected necessity of defending one of her proteges aroused her.  “I’ve made it a point to see Eben every day for the last three months, and he hasn’t touched a drop.  He’s one of the best workers we have on the place.”

“I’ve got too much on my mind to put up with that kind of thing,” said Mr. Flint, “and I won’t be worried here on the place.  I can get capable men to tend cattle, at least.  I have to put up with political rascals who rob and deceive me as soon as my back is turned, I have to put up with inefficiency and senility, but I won’t have it at home.”

“Fitch will be transferred to the gardener if you think best,” she said.

It suddenly occurred to Victoria, in the light of a new discovery, that in the past her father’s irritability had not extended to her.  And this discovery, she knew, ought to have some significance, but she felt unaccountably indifferent to it.  Mr. Flint walked to a window at the far end of the room and flung apart the tightly closed curtains before it.