id--but
he was a man, and Phoebe felt proud of him, for the moment at least.

"You idiot!" cried his father, "and I was an idiot too to put any faith
in you; come away from that artful girl. Can't you see that it's all a
made-up plan from beginning to end? What was she sent down here for but
to catch you, you oaf, you fool, you! Drop her, or you drop me. That's
all I've got to say."

"Yes, drop me, Clarence," said Phoebe, with a smile; "for in the mean
time you hurt me. See, you have bruised my arm. While you settle this
question with your father, I will go to grandmamma. Pardon me, I take
more interest in her than in this discussion between him and you."

"You shan't go," cried her lover, "not a step. Look here, sir. If that's
what it comes to, her before you. What you've made of me ain't much, is
it? but I don't mind what I go in for, as long as she's to the fore. Her
before you."

"Is that your last word?" said Mr. Copperhead.

"Yes." His son faced him with a face as set and cloudy as his own. The
mouth, shut close and sullen, was the same in both; but those brown eyes
which Clarence got from his mother, and which were usually mild in their
expression, looking out gently from the ruder face to which they did not
seem to belong, were now, not clear, but muddy with resolution,
glimmering with dogged obstinacy from under the drooping eyelids. He was
not like himself; he was as he had been that day when Mr. May saw him at
the Dorsets, determined, more than a match for his father, who had only
the obstinacy of his own nature, not that dead resisting force of two
people to bring to the battle. Clarence had all the pertinacity that was
not in his mother, to reinforce his own. Mr. Copperhead stared at his
son with that look of authority, half-imperious, half-brutal, with which
he was in the habit of crushing all who resisted him; but Clarence did
not quail. He stood dull and immovable, his eyes contracted, his face
stolid, and void of all expression but that of resistance. He was not
much more than a fool, but just by so much as his father was more
reasonable, more clear-sighted than himself, was Clarence stronger than
his father. He held Phoebe by the sleeve, that she might not escape him;
but he faced Mr. Copperhead with a dull determination that all the
powers of earth could not shake.

For the moment the father lost his self-control.

"Then I'll go," he said, "and when you've changed your mind, you can
come to me