"You surely don't compare Maurice Jourdain with your father?"
"He's faithful. Papa was faithful. I'm faithful too."
"Faithful! To a horrid man like that!"
"He isn't horrid. He's kind and clever and good. He's brave, like Mark. He'd have been a soldier if he hadn't had to help his mother. And he's honourable. He said he wouldn't see me or write to me unless you let him. And he hasn't seen me and he hasn't written. You can't say he isn't honourable."
"I suppose," her mother said, "he's honourable enough."
"You'll have to let him come. If you don't, I shall go to him."
"I declare if you're not as bad as your Aunt Charlotte."
IV.
Incredible; impossible; but it had happened.
And it was as if she had known it—all the time, known that she would come downstairs that morning and see Maurice Jourdain's letter lying on the table. She always had known that something, some wonderful, beautiful, tremendous thing would happen to her. This was it.