, and I'm very sure they wouldn't all be
painful."

It was rebellion, pure and simple, and for once in his life Francis
Vennor gave place to wrath--plebeian wrath, vociferous and undignified.

"Shame on you!" he cried; "you are a disgrace to the name--it's the
blood of that cursed socialist on your mother's side. Sit still and
listen to me--" Gertrude, knowing her own temper, was about to run
away--"If you marry that infernal upstart, you'll do it at your own
expense, do you hear? You sha'n't finger a penny of my money as long as
I can keep you out of it. Do you understand?"

"I should be very dull if I didn't understand," she replied, preparing
to make good her retreat. "If you are quite through, perhaps you will
let me say that you are tilting at a windmill of your own building. So
far as I know, Mr. Brockway hasn't the slightest intention of asking me
to marry him; and until you took the trouble to demonstrate the
possibility, I don't think it ever occurred to me. But after what you've
said, I don't think I can ever consent to be married to Cousin
Chester--it would be too mercenary, you know;" and with this parting
shot she vanished.

In the privacy of her own stateroom she sat at the window to think it
all out. It was all very undutiful, doubtless, and she was sorry for her
part in the quarrel almost before the words were cold. She could
scarcely forgive herself for having allowed her father to carry his
assumption to such lengths, but the temptation had proved irresistible.
It was such a delicious little farce, and if it might only have stopped
short of the angry conclusion--but it had not, and therein lay the sting
of it. Whereupon, feeling the sting afresh, she set her face flintwise
against the prearranged marriage.

"I sha'n't do it," she said aloud, pressing her hot cheek against the
cool glass of the window. "I don't love Chester, and I never shall--not
in the way I should. And if I marry him, I shall be just what papa
called Mr. Brockway--only he isn't that, or anything of the kind. Poor
Mr. Brockway! If he knew what we have been talking about----"

From that point reflection went adrift in pleasanter channels. How
good-natured and forgiving Mr. Brockway had been! He must have known
that he was purposely ignored at the dinner-table, where he was an
invited guest, and yet he had not resented it; and what better proof of
gentle breeding than this could he have given? Then, in that crucial
moment of dang