"Have you nothing to say, sir?" he asked. "A good wife and an old and
honorable estate are worth a few words of acknowledgment."

"I do not wish to marry Drumloch, sir." John Campbell turned white, and
the paper in his hand shook violently. "Do you mean me to understand that
I have been working ten years for a disappointment? I will not have ten
Years of my life wasted to pleasure a foolish youth."

"Is it right for me to marry a woman I do not love, and so waste my whole
life?"

A conversation begun in such a spirit was not likely to end
satisfactorily. Indeed it closed in great anger, and the renewal of the
subject day after day, only made both men more determined to stand by the
position they had taken toward each other. Allan almost wondered at his
own obstinacy. Before his father had so broadly stated the case to him, he
had rather liked his cousin. She was a calm, cheerful, sensible girl, with
very beautiful eyes, and that caressing, thoughtful manner which is so
comfortable in household life. He believed that if he had been left any
freedom of choice, he would have desired only Mary Campbell to be his
wife. But he told himself that he would not be ordered into matrimony,
or compelled to sacrifice his right of choice, for any number of
dead-and-gone Campbells.

There was no prospect of any reconciliation between father and son, except
by Allan's unconditional surrender. Allan did not regard this step as
impossible in the future, but for the present he knew it was. He decided
to leave home for a few months, and when the subject was opened again to
be himself the person to move the question. He felt that in the matter of