'Has he!'
'Surely you must have known, father, that he and I were seeing each other a great deal.'
'Not from your lips, my girl.'
'Well, father——' Again she stopped, this strong and capable woman, gifted with a fine brain to organize and a powerful will to command. She quailed, robbed of speech, before the causeless, vindictive, and infantile wrath of an old man who happened to be in a bad temper. She actually felt like a naughty schoolgirl before him. Such is the tremendous influence of lifelong habit, the irresistible power of the patria potestas when it has never been relaxed. Ezra Brunt saw in front of him only a cowering child. 'Clive is coming up to see you to-night,' she went on timidly, clearing her throat.
'Humph! Is he?'
The rosy and tender dream of five minutes ago lay in fragments at Eva's feet. She brooded with stricken apprehension upon the forms of obstruction which his despotism might choose.
The next morning Clive and his uncle breakfasted together as usual in the parlour behind, the chemist's shop.
'Uncle,' said Clive brusquely, when the meal was nearly finished, 'I'd better tell you that I've proposed to Eva Brunt.'
Old George Timmis lowered the Manchester Guardian and gazed at Clive over his steel-rimmed spectacles.