will cause a quarrel between you and your
father. I--I cannot do that."

"There is nothing wrong in my seeing you," said Bob, stoutly; "if he
cares to quarrel with me for that, I cannot help it. If the people I
choose for my friends are good people, he has no right to an objection,
even though he is my father."

Cynthia had never come so near real admiration for him as at that moment.

"No, Bob, you must not come," she said. "I will not have you quarrel with
him on my account."

"Then I will quarrel with him on my own account," he had answered.
"Good-by. You may expect me this day week."

He went into the hall to put on his overcoat. Cynthia stood still on the
spot of the carpet where he had left her. He put his head in at the door.

"This day week," he said.

"Bob, you must not come," she answered. But the street door closed after
him as he spoke.

CHAPTER IX

"You must not come." Had Cynthia made the prohibition strong enough?
Ought she not to have said, "If you do come, I will not see you?" Her
knowledge of the motives of the men and women in the greater world was
largely confined to that which she had gathered from novels--not trashy
novels, but those by standard authors of English life. And many another
girl of nineteen has taken a novel for a guide when she has been suddenly
confronted with the first great problem outside of her experience.
Somebody has declared that there are only seven plots in the world. There
are many parallels in English literature to Cynthia's position,--so far
as she was able to define that position,--the wealthy young peer, the
parson's or physician's daughter, and the worldly, inexorable parents who
had other plans.

Cynthia was, of course, foolish. She would not look ahead, yet there was
the mirage in the sky when she allowed herself to dream. It can
truthfully be said that she was not in love with Bob Worthington. She
felt, rather than knew, that if love came to her the feeling she had for
Jethro Bass--strong though that was--would be as nothing to it. The girl
felt the intensity of her nature, and shrank from it when her thoughts
ran that way, for it frightened her.

"Mrs. Merrill" she said, a few days later, when she found herself alone
with that lady, "you once told me you would have no objection if a friend
came to see me here."

"None whatever, my dear," answered Mrs. Merrill. "I have asked you to
have your friends here."

Mrs. Merrill knew that a young man h