turned, determined to brave it out.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE SQUIRE SPEAKS HIS MIND

For a minute or more her father fidgeted about, moving his papers
backwards and forwards but saying nothing.

At last he spoke. "You have taken a most serious and painful step,
Ida," he said. "Of course you have a right to do as you please, you
are of full age, and I cannot expect that you will consider me or your
family in your matrimonial engagements, but at the same time I think
it is my duty to point out to you what it is that you are doing. You
are refusing one of the finest matches in England in order to marry a
broken-down, middle-aged, half-pay colonel, a man who can hardly
support you, whose part in life is played, or who is apparently too
idle to seek another."

Here Ida's eyes flashed ominously, but she made no comment, being
apparently afraid to trust herself to speak.

"You are doing this," went on her father, working himself up as he
spoke, "in the face of my wishes, and with a knowledge that your
action will bring your family, to say nothing of your father, to utter
and irretrievable ruin."

"Surely, father, surely," broke in Ida, almost in a cry, "you would
not have me marry one man when I love another. When I made the promise
I had not become attached to Colonel Quaritch."

"Love! pshaw!" said her father. "Don't talk to me in that sentimental
and school-girl way--you are too old for it. I am a plain man, and I
believe in family affection and in /duty/, Ida. /Love/, as you call
it, is only too often another word for self-will and selfishness and
other things that we are better without."

"I can understand, father," answered Ida, struggling to keep her
temper under this jobation, "that my refusal to marry Mr. Cossey is
disagreeable to you for obvious reasons, though it is not so very long
since you detested him yourself. But I do not see why an honest
woman's affection for another man should be talked of as though there
was something shameful about it. It is all very well to sneer at
'love,' but, after all a woman is flesh and blood; she is not a
chattel or a slave girl, and marriage is not like anything else--it
means many things to a woman. There is no magic about marriage to make
that which is unrighteous righteous."

"There," said her father, "it is no good your lecturing to me on
marriage, Ida. If you do not want to marry Cossey, I can't force you
to. If