“You aren’t displeased with me, dearest?” she asked.

“Displeased?” Charles Verity repeated, at first absently.  “Displeased, my dear, no—­why?”

“We didn’t do wrong?”—­labouring the point, the more fully to recall and retain him—­“Didn’t take too much upon ourselves—­Aunt Felicia, I mean, and I—­by persuading Darcy Faircloth to stay on Sunday, by entertaining him when you were away?  Or—­or have I been stupid, dearest, and thoughtlessly wearied you by talking too much and too long?”

“Neither,” he said.  “On the contrary, all you have told me goes to lessen certain difficulties, make the crooked, in some degree, straight and rough places plain.”

For, if Faircloth had been here so recently, broken bread too in the house, so he argued, it became the easier to bid him return.  And Charles Verity needed to see him, see him this morning—­since purpose of farewells, to be spoken in those long-deserted courts of romance, stiffened, becoming a thing not merely to be turned hither and thither in thought, but to be plainly and directly done.—­“Send for him in your own name,” he said.  “Explain to him how matters stand, and ask him to talk with me.”

And, as Damaris agreed, rejoiced by the success of her adventurous diplomacy, making to go at once and give the required instructions—­

“Stay—­stay a moment,” her father said, and drew her down to sit on the chair-arm, keeping her hand in his, and with his other hand stroking it wistfully.  For though certain difficulties might be sensibly lessened, they were not altogether removed; and he smiled inwardly, aware that not even in the crack of doom are feminine rights over a man other than conflicting and uncommonly ticklish to adjust.

“Before we commit ourselves to further enterprises, my darling, let us quite understand one another upon one or two practical points—­bearing in mind the blades of Atropos’ envious scissors.  My affairs are in order”—­Damaris shrank, piteously expostulated.

“Oh! but must we, are we obliged to speak of those things?  They grate on me—­Commissioner Sahib, they are ugly.  They hurt.”

“Yes—­distinctly we are obliged to speak of them.  To do so can neither hasten nor retard the event.  All the more obliged to speak of them, because I have never greatly cared about money, except for what I could do with it.—­As a means, of vast importance.  As an end, uninteresting.—­So it has been lightly come and lightly go, I am afraid.  All the same I’ve not been culpably improvident.  A portion of my income dies with me; but enough remains to secure you against any anxiety regarding ways and means, if not to make you a rich woman.  I have left an annuity to your Aunt Felicia.  Her means are slender, dear creature, and her benevolence outruns them, so that she balances a little anxiously, I gather, on the edge of debt.  The capital sum will return to you eventually.  Carteret and McCabe consented,