have
something to say to me, I suspect."

"I am going to Kelstein," Hetty began firmly. "I would like to obey
you there, sir, as the others do at home. I do not mean outwardly:
but to feel, while I am absent, that I am earning--" She paused and
cast about for a word.

"You will be earning, of course. There is always satisfaction in
that."

"I am not thinking of money."

"Of my approval, then? Your employer, Mr. Grantham, is an honest
gentleman: I shall trust his report of you."

"Papa, I came to beg you for more than that. Will you not let me
feel that I am earning something more?--that if, as times goes on, my
conduct pleases you, you will be more disposed to consider--to grant
me--"

"Mehetabel!"

"I love him, papa! I cannot help it. Sir--!"

She put out both hands to him, her eyes welling. But he had turned
sharply away from her cry, and strode across the room in his
irritation. Her hands fell, and one caught at the edge of the table
for support while she leaned, bowing her head.

He came abruptly back. "Are you aware, Mehetabel, that you have
proposed a bargain to me? I do not bargain with my children:
I expect obedience. Nor as a father am I obliged to give my reasons.
But since you are leaving us, and I would not dismiss you harshly,
let me say that I have studied this man for whom you avow a fondness;
and apart from his calling--which I detest--I find him vain, foppish,
insincere. He has _levitas_ with _levitas_: I believe his heart to
be as shallow as his head. I know him to be no fit mate for one of
my daughters; least of all for you who have gifts above your
sisters--gifts which I have recognised and tried to improve.
Child, summon your pride to you, and let it help your obedience."
He broke off and gazed out of the window. "If," said he more softly,
"our fate be not offered to us, we must make it. If, while our true
fate delays, there come to us unworthy phantoms simulating it, we
should test them; lest impatient we run to embrace vanity, and
betray, not our hopes alone, but the purpose God had in mind for us
from the beginning."

Hetty looked up. She might have thought that she was twenty-seven,
and asked herself how long was it likely to be before a prince came
across those dreary fields to the thatched parsonage, seeking her.
But her heart was full of the man she loved, and she thought only
that her father did him bitter injustice.

She shivered and lifted her face. "Go