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She felt that Ernest Clifton had spoken the truth. No alternative remained to her. She had agreed with her eyes open, to marry him, and she was quite unable to give any reason that would be considered satisfactory by her father for declining to marry him.

After an hour or two she actually became resigned to the idea. After all, what did it matter? She had got into the frame of mind of the one who asks this question. The frame of mind of the French philosopher on the guillotine, who rolled his cigarette, saying “N’importe: un homme de mois!”

What did it matter whom she married? The general scheme of the universe would not be interfered with because she was about to do the thing that was most abhorrent to her of all acts done by women—this act being, by the way, the one which she was most earnest to do only six months before!

She was able, without the shedding of a tear, to sit down to her escritoire and write a letter to Pierce, letting him know the determination to which she had come, and admitting to him that she had behaved basely—cruelly—inconsiderately. She had been bound to Mr. Clifton—and she knew it—at the very moment that she had acknowledged to the man to whom she was writing that she loved him. She admitted how culpably weak she had been—and still was, but she thought that she was strong enough to see that the best way—the only way—of sparing the one who was dearest to her much misery—the only way of escaping from a hopeless position was by submitting to Fate. If he would think over the matter he would, she was sure, see that she was right, and thinking over it all he could not but be thankful that he was saved from a wretched woman who did not know her own mind two days together and who had no sense of honour or truth or fidelity.

That was the substance of the letter which she felt great satisfaction in writing to Pierce Winwood; and she sincerely believed that she was all that she announced herself to be, though she would have been terribly disappointed if she had thought that she would succeed in convincing him that she was unworthy to be loved by him.

She felt greatly relieved on writing this letter embodying as it did so frank a confession of her weakness and—incidentally—of her womanliness, and she was able to dance nine dances and to partake of a very recherche supper in the course of the night. She felt that she had become thoroughly worldly, taking a pleasure in the whirl and the glow and the glitter of all. There was no chance of her being led to think about what lay heavy on her heart while she was giving herself up to this form of intoxication. Every dance had the effect of a dram of green Chartreuse upon her, and the result of her night’s festivity was to make her feel, she thought, that the world was very well adapted as a place of residence for men and women; and as for the worldliness—well, worldliness was one of the pleasantest elements in the world of men and women.

Having come to so satisfactory a conclusion, it was somewhat remarkable, she thought, that, on finding her father drinking his glass of Apollinaris in his study—he had just returned from the House—she should go straight up to him, after shutting the door, and say, “I wish to say to you that I do not wish to marry Ernest Clifton, because I love quite another man.”

He looked at her curiously for a few moments, then he said, laying down his tumbler:

“What stuff is this? Is it not true that you agreed to listen to Clifton six months ago? Heavens above us! Another man—quite another man! Have you been making a fool of Clifton and—and yourself, and do you now think to make a fool of me?”

“I am ready to admit everything,” she cried plaintively. “I have been a fool, I know. I have behaved badly—with no sense of honour—basely—basely—but I am wretched and I will not marry Ernest Clifton—oh, nothing will force me to marry him.”

“Poor child! poor child! It is quite natural this maidenly shrinking!” said the father smiling like a mulberry. “Bromide of potassium—that will steady you. After all, you are not going to be married tomorrow, nor even the next day. Give yourself a night off, my child. Don’t let your mother rush you. It’s all very well for her. At her age women can do anything; but a girl’s nerves——”

“It is not my nerves—it is—because I love another man—and I mean to love him. I cannot help it—I have tried—God knows—oh, my dear father, you will pity me—you must pity me, no matter how foolish I have been.”

She broke down and would have thrown herself into his arms but that he was too quick for her. At the first suggestion of such a thing, he had picked up his tumbler half full of Apollinaris. That saved him. It was on a big red leather chair that she was sobbing, not on his shirt front.

“Poor child—poor child, poor—bromide,” he murmured. “Tell me all about it, my Josephine—my little Josephine. I have had a busy night of it but I can give five minutes to the troubles of my little girl.”

He flattered himself that he was acting the part of the father to a quaver. He half believed that she would accept his representation of an honourable character without misgiving. What could she know of the terms of the contract which he had made—in the most delicate way, no word being used on either side to which exception could be taken by a sensitive person—with Ernest Clifton, respecting the feeling of the ticklish constituency of Arbroath Burghs?

She lost some precious moments of the night in sobbing. But though her father did not know very much about women he knew enough to cause him to refrain from asking her to come to the point upon which she was anxious to talk to him. Upstairs the door of the Lady Gwendolen’s dressing-room banged.

“Poor little Josey!” said the father smoothing her hair. He felt that he really would miss her when Clifton had married her and he had got his seat in the Cabinet.

She looked up.

“I know I have been a fool, my dear father,” she said. “But I love another man—not Mr. Clifton, and I will not marry Mr. Clifton.”

“That is nonsense, my dear,” said he in a pleasant, soothing tone—the tone that suggests a large toleration for human weaknesses, especially those of a girl, because so few of them are worth talking about. “You must not worry yourself, my dear. You will have worries enough when you are married, if I know anything about what marriage means. Now take my advice and have a good dose of bromide and get into bed. Don’t get up early. Had you a touch of the sun when you were up the river?”

“He will not listen to me! He treats me as if I were a child—a sick child!” cried Josephine piteously.