"I wish I could. But I cannot. Sir, I still entreat you to abandon this intention of yours."
"Only on condition that you make the proposal yourself without any further delay."
From this decision the obstinate old father would not recede. The discussion continued for some time, but he seemed to grow only more fixed in his intention, and certainly he became more acerbated in temper. Gore was sure that if he were allowed to take up the matter with his daughter, it would be with even more harshly dictatorial tyranny than had seemed probable at first.
Finally Gore promised that he would himself propose to Mariquita in form on the morrow, Don Joaquin being with difficulty induced to undertake on his side that he would not "prepare" her for what was coming. He gave this promise quite as reluctantly as Gore gave his. The younger man dreaded the bad effects of precipitancy; the elder, who had plenty of self-conceit behind his dry dignity, relinquished very unwillingly the advantages he counted upon from his diplomacy, and the weight of his authority being known beforehand to be on the suitor's side. If Gore were really so uncertain of success, it would be a feather in the paternal cap to have insured that success by his solemn indications of approval. But he saw that without his promise of absolute abstention from interference, Gore would not agree to make his proposal, so Don Joaquin ungraciously yielded the point perhaps chiefly because important business called him away from the morrow's dawn till late at night.
CHAPTER XXVII.
After breakfast next morning Sarella, not quite accidentally, found herself alone with Gore.
"You gentlemen," she said, "did go to bed sometime, I suppose. But I thought you never were going to stop your talk—and to tell you the truth, I wished my bedroom was farther away, or had a thicker wall. I go to bed to sleep. You were at it two hours and twenty minutes."
Gore duly apologized for the postponement of her sleep, and wondered how thin the wooden partition might be between her room and that in which the long discussion had taken place.
"These partitions of thin boarding are wretched," she informed him, "especially as they are only stained. If they were even papered it would prevent the tobacco-smoke coming through the cracks where the boards have shrunk." Gore could not help smiling.