"He won't if I say the word. Give me the column to-morrow, and any time I want it for a month or two, and I'll guarantee that John Everard will do the right thing by you."
"You can have the column. What do you want it for?"
"The alliance, of course. I'm in the business of making history, as I told you. Don't open your mouth quite so wide, please. There's to be a meeting of the wise in this house, after a dinner, to express favorable opinions about the alliance. Then in a month or two a distinguished peer, member of the British Cabinet, is coming over to sound the great men on the question.... What are you whistling for?"
"You've got a fine thing, Mrs. Dillon," said he. "By Jove, but I'll help you spread this for all it's worth."
"Understand," she said, tapping the table with emphasis, "the alliance must go through as far as we can make it go. Now, do your best. When you go over to see John Everard next, go with a mind to kill him if he doesn't take your offer to marry his daughter. I'll see to it that the poem on the Pilgrims does the trick for you."
"I'd have killed him long ago, if I thought it worth the trouble," he said.
He felt that the crisis had come for him and Mona. That charming girl, in spite of his entreaties, of his threats to go exploring Africa, remained as rigidly faithful to her ideas of duty as her father to his obstinacy. She would not marry without his consent. With all his confidence in Anne's cleverness, how could he expect her to do the impossible? To change the unchangeable? John Everard showed no sign of the influence which had brought Livingstone to his knees, when Grahame and Mona stood before him, and the lover placed in her father's hands the document of honor.
"Really, this is wonderful," said Everard, impressed to the point of violence. "You are to compose and to read the poem on the Pilgrim Fathers?"
"That's the prize," said Grahame severely. He might be squaring off at this man the next moment, and could not carry his honors lightly. "And now that it has come I want my reward. We must be married two weeks before I read that poem, and the whole world must see and admire the source of my inspiration."
He drew his beloved into his arms and kissed her pale cheek.