e now.'

'Had I?'

She nodded, putting her lips tightly together--a trick of hers.

'Come up about half-past eight.'

'Good! I will let myself out.'

He left her, and she gazed dreamily at the window, which looked on to a
whitewashed yard. The next moment someone else entered the room with
heavy footsteps. She turned round a little startled.

It was her father.

'Why! You _are_ back early, father! How----' She stopped. Something in
the old man's glance gave her a premonition of disaster. To this day she
does not know what accident brought him from Manchester two hours sooner
than usual, and to Machin Street instead of Pireford.

'Has young Timmis been here?' he inquired curtly.

'Yes.'

'Ha!' with subdued, sinister satisfaction, 'I saw him going out. He
didna see me.' Ezra Brunt deposited his hat and sat down.

Intimate with all her father's various moods, she saw instantly and with
terrible certainty that a series of chances had fatally combined
themselves against her. If only she had not happened to tell Clive that
her father would be at Manchester this day! If only her father had
adhered to his customary hour of return! If only Clive had had the sense
to make his proposal openly at Pireford some evening! If only he had
left a little earlier! If only her father had not caught him going out
by the side-door on a Thursday afternoon when the place was empty!
Here, she guessed, was the suggestion of furtiveness which had raised
her father's unreasoning anger, often fierce, and always incalculable.

'Clive Timmis has asked me to marry him, father.'

'Has he!'

'Surely you must have known, father, that he and I were seeing each
other a great deal.'

'Not from your lips, my girl.'

'Well, father----' Again she stopped, this strong and capable woman,
gifted with a fine brain to organize and a powerful will to command. She
quailed, robbed of speech, before the causeless, vindictive, and
infantile wrath of an old man who happened to be in a bad temper. She
actually felt like a naughty schoolgirl before him. Such is the
tremendous influence of lifelong habit, the irresistible power of the
_patria potestas_ when it has never been relaxed. Ezra Brunt saw in
front of him only a cowering child. 'Clive is coming up to see you
to-night,' she went on timidly, clearing her throat.

'Humph! Is he?'

The rosy and tender dream of five minutes ago lay in fragments at Eva's
feet. She brooded with stricken apprehension