The colonel was standing now; his face reflecting the anger that boiled in his breast.
“I tell you, miss, you can’t break your engagement to Major King! That is out of your power, beyond you, entirely. It rests with me, and with me solely, to terminate any such obligation. I have pledged a soldier’s word and a soldier’s honor in this matter, miss. It is incumbent on you to see that both are redeemed.”
“I’m in a mind to do my own thinking now, father; I’m old enough.”
“A woman is never old enough to know her own mind! What’s the occasion of this change in the wind? Surely not—”
Colonel Landcraft’s brows drew together over his thin nose, making small glaring points of his blue eyes among the gathered wrinkles and bristling hair. 80 He held his words suspended while he searched her face for justification of his pent arraignment.
“Nonsense!” said he at last, letting his breath go with the word, as if relief had come. “Put the notion out of your head, for you are going to marry Major King.”
“I tell you, father, you must adjust yourself to my decision in this matter. I am not going to marry Major King. I have told him so, and it is final.”
His own stubbornness, his own fire, was reflected in her as she spoke. But Colonel Landcraft was not to be moved from what he considered his right to dispose of her in a way that he believed would be an honor to the army and a glory to the nation.
“You’ll marry Major King, or die a maid!” he declared.
“Very well, father,” she returned, in ambiguous concession.