“I recognize that; but I can’t give you any other answer.”

“We’ll see.”  He pushed back his chair again, and rose.  He had already crossed the room, when, a new thought occurring to him, he turned at the door.  “At least I presume I may count on you not to see this young man again without telling me?”

“Not without telling you—­afterward.  I couldn’t undertake more than that.”

“H’m!” he ejaculated, before passing out.  “Then I must take active measures.”

It was easier, however, to talk about active measures than to devise them.  While Dorothea was sobbing, with her elbows on the dining-room table, and her face buried in her hands, he was pacing his room in search of desperate remedies.  It was a case in which his mind turned instinctively to Diane for help; but in the very act of doing so he was confronted by her theories as to Dorothea’s need of diplomatic guidance.  For that, he told himself, the time was past.  The event had proved how impotent mere “management” was to control her, and justified his own preference for force.

Before she went to bed that night Dorothea was summoned to her father’s presence, to receive the commands which should regulate her conduct toward “the young man Wappinger.”  They could have been summed up in the statement that she must know him no more.  She was not only never to see him, or write to him, or communicate with him, by direct or indirect means; as far as he could command it, she was not to think of him, or remember his name.  His measures grew more drastic in proportion as he gave them utterance, until he himself become aware that they would be difficult to fulfil.

“I will not attempt to extract a promise from you,” he was prudent enough to say, in conclusion, “that you will carry out my wishes, because I know you would never bring on me the unhappiness that would spring from disobedience.”

“It’s hardly fair, father, to say that,” she replied, firmly.  “In war, no one should shrink from—­the misfortunes of war.”

“That means, then, that you defy me?”

She was calmer than he as she made her reply.

“It doesn’t mean that I defy you.  I love you too much to put either you or myself in such an odious position as that.  But it does mean that one day, sooner or later, I shall marry—­Mr. Wappinger.”

He looked at her with a bitter smile.

“I admire your frankness, Dorothea,” he said, after a brief pause, “and I shall do my best to imitate it.  If it’s to be war, we shall at least fight in the open.  I know what you intend to do, and you know that I mean to circumvent you.  The position on both sides being so pleasantly clear, you may come and kiss me good-night.”

During the process of the stiff little embrace that followed it was as difficult for her not to fling herself sobbing on his breast as for him not to seize her in his arms; but each maintained the restraint inspired by the justice of their respective causes.  When she had closed the door behind her, he stood for a long time, musing.  That his thoughts were not altogether tragic became manifest as his brow cleared, and the ghost of a smile, this time without bitterness, hovered about his lips.  Suddenly he slapped his leg, like a man who has made a discovery.