that you found out now, than later on, that you could not possibly
be happy with a man who spoke slightingly of the patriarchs and their
wives. Now I'll leave you, with confidence that you will be able to
explain matters to Mr. Holland."

"What! you won't be here?"

Dismay was in the girl's face as she spoke. She had clearly looked for
the moral support of her father's presence while she would be making her
explanation to the man whom she had, a few months before, promised to
marry, but whom she had found it necessary to dismiss by letter, owing
to her want of sympathy in some of his recent utterances.

"You won't be here?"

"No; I have unfortunately an engagement just at that hour, Phyllis,"
replied Mr. Ayrton. "But do you really think there is any need for me
to be here? Personally, I fancy that my presence would only tend to
complicate matters. Your own feeling, your own woman's instinct, will
enable you to explain--well, all that needs explanation. I have more
confidence in your capacity to explain since you gave that pretty little
laugh just now. Experience--ah, the experience of a girl such as you
are, suggests an astronomer without a telescope. Still, there were
astronomers before there were telescopes; and so I leave you, my beloved
child--ah, my own child once again! No cold hand of a lover is now
between us."

It was not until he was some distance down Piccadilly that it occurred
to him that he should have pictured the lover with a warm hand; and
that omission on his part caused him a greater amount of irritation than