"Allan! You are mightily well acquainted. I see I must prepare to make an unconditional surrender."
He walked in a nervous and disquieted manner out of the room. At the head of the stairs he encountered Mademoiselle DeBerczy, on her way up.
"Helene," he said, with the desperation of one who in the fifty-ninth minute after the eleventh hour does not entirely despair of a gleam of hope, "I wish you would tell me in two words if Rose loves Allan Dunlop. Does she?"
"Don't she!" exclaimed Helene, with explosive earnestness, and the two words were sufficient. Their effect was not lessened by subsequent occurrences. On opening the drawing-room door Rose hastened to his side, turning her back, as she did so, upon a young man of ardent but entirely self-respectful aspect, standing not far distant.
"Oh, Papa!" she cried in her extremity, "save me from him. He loves me!"
"Is that the only reason?" asked her father.
"No; there is a greater one. I love him!"
"Ah!" murmured Allan softly, "it is to me you should say that."
"She shall have unlimited opportunities for saying it to you," observed the elder gentleman, with kindly promptness, but with a sore heart. "After a while," he added, turning to Allan, with his hand on the door knob, "I will be glad to see you."
In this sentence, which is an interesting illustration of the power of manners over mind, the word "will" was purposely substituted for the customary "shall." It was only by an active effort of will that the good Commodore could be glad to see his daughter's suitor. But their interview, if it did not prove a death-blow to his prejudices, at least inflicted serious injuries upon them, from which they never afterwards recovered. He was won over by the young fellow's manliness, which, when contrasted with mere gentlemanliness, apart from it, puts the latter at a striking disadvantage, even in the mind of the confirmed aristocrat. There was also a tinge of absurdity in the idea of being ashamed of a son-in-law of whom his country was beginning to be proud. Perhaps it was as well that he should arrive unaided at this opinion, for Allan had won the rest of the household to his side, and a belief in which one is entirely alone must contain something more than mere pride of birth in order to support its possessor in comfort. Even the loyal Tredway would have failed to respond to his imagined need, for this faithful servitor had long since discovered that the happiness of his young mistress was more to be desired than the preservation of any fancied superiority on the part of the family to which he was devotedly attached.