"By Jove! is he though? I'm glad to hear it."
"I think he'd be a very kind husband," said Lallie, "but a bit boring sometimes. I suppose I'd better be thinking of bed. You haven't helped me much, Tony," and Lallie arose and stood in front of him, slender and upright, in her straight green gown. Tony rose too.
"I don't quite know what you wanted me to say, Lallie, but I'd like to say this: Don't you marry anybody for the sake of having a house of your own. Your mother's daughter is capable of something finer and better than that. I cannot in all my experience recall such a happy marriage as hers. Child, there is such a thing. Don't you believe people who say that respect, and affection, and mutual suitability, and all the rest of it are one atom of good if you're not in love with the man. You spoke to-night of your father's restlessness. Do you think he would have been like that if your mother had lived? It was simply that he had the most perfect home man ever had on this earth; and when she was taken away from him the wrench destroyed his will-power, and he has been at the mercy of his impulses ever since. Never judge him, Lallie; he can't help it."
The tears welled up into Lallie's eyes.
"I don't judge him," she faltered; "it's myself I judge, and blame, and yet I tried so hard to make his home happy and comfortable, so that he'd want to stay with me; and I can make a nice home, I really can, but it wasn't enough for Dad. Last winter I thought we were settled. He liked the hunting, and we were so happy, and had such jokes about Aunt Emileen, but it all came to an end--and he'd like me to marry, Tony; that's the har-r-d part."
The big tears hung on Lallie's lashes, the corners of her mouth drooped, and she looked so small, and pathetic, and forlorn that Tony fairly turned his back upon her and leant his arms on the chimneypiece, staring with the greatest interest at the shield bearing his college arms, which he did not see.
"I am convinced," he said, and his voice was almost gruff, "that your father would hate to think you married anybody simply for the sake of getting married. Of course he would like to see you well and happily married--but----"
"Good-night, Tony," Lallie said meekly.
He turned and shook her outstretched hand and stood at the door watching her as she went slowly up the stairs with drooping head and deep depression in every line of the slender little figure that always looked so much taller than it really was. She never turned her head to look back at him, and Tony shut the door and sat down at his desk with a groan.
Matron was right: he'd got it late, and he'd got it badly. But she was wrong when she informed Val that he didn't know what was the matter with him.