He is acting like--well, like
the cur that he is, in putting on the screw as he is doing; but, of
course, that is the way out of it, and the only way, and there you
are."

"Father," she said again, "will you give me ten days, that is, until
Christmas Day? If nothing happens between this and then I will marry
Mr. Edward Cossey."

A sudden light of hope shone in his eyes. She saw it, though he tried
to hide it by turning his head away.

"Oh, yes," he answered, "as you wish; settle it one way or the other
on Christmas Day, and then we can go out with the new year. You see
your brother James is dead, I have no one left to advise me now, and I
suppose that I am getting old. At any rate, things seem to be too much
for me. Settle it as you like; settle it as you like," and he got up,
leaving his breakfast half swallowed, and went off to moon aimlessly
about the park.

So she made up her mind at last. This was the end of her struggling.
She could not let her old father be turned out of house and home to
starve, for practically they would starve. She knew her hateful lover
well enough to be aware that he would show no mercy. It was a question
of the woman or the money, and she was the woman. Either she must let
him take her or they must be destroyed; there was no middle course.
And in these circumstances there was no room for hesitation. Once more
her duty became clear to her. She must give up her life, she must give
up her love, she must give up herself. Well, so be it. She was weary
of the long endeavour against fortune, now she would yield and let the
tide of utter misery sweep over her like a sea--to bear her away till
at last it brought her to that oblivion in which perchance all things
come right or are as though they had never been.

She had scarcely spoken to her lover, Harold Quaritch, for some weeks.
She had as she understood it entered into a kind of unspoken agreement
with her father not to do so, and that agreement Harold had realised
and respected. Since their last letters to each other they had met
once or twice casually or at church, interchanged a few indifferent
words, though their eyes spoke another story, touched each other's
hands and parted. That was absolutely all. But now that Ida had come
to this momentous decision she felt he had a right to learn it, and so
once more she wrote to him. She might have gone to see him or told him
to meet her, but she would not. For one thing she did not dare to
tru