"You know I can't do that; you know you've got me hard and fast, because in front of you and all your scheming stands the girl who does not deserve to suffer. I must bring myself down, I suppose, to appeal to you," said Gilbert. "I want you to release me; I want you to find a way out of the tangle you have created for us all."
"And I say that I decline to do anything of the kind," said Daniel Meggison. "I take my stand upon the happiness of my child; I raise my banner for her sake, and I fight to my last breath!"
"And very nobly said, too!" A voice came from the further end of the room, and there rose from the depths of an easy chair there, the back of which had been towards them, the long form of Aubrey Meggison. He held a sporting paper in his hands, and he now lounged forward, so as to put himself in a measure between the two men. "I don't always say that I uphold the old man, mind you," he added—"but on this occasion I think he has spoken as only a father and a man could speak. I suppose, Mr. Byfield," went on the youth aggressively, as he tossed the paper into the chair he had left—"I suppose it didn't occur to you that there might be such a thing—or such a being—as a man of the world to deal with—not an old man you could bully—eh?"
"I beg your pardon; in a sense I had forgotten you," said Gilbert, a little helplessly. "I quite understand that if only from motives of policy alone you would take the side of your father. I've nothing further to say to either of you."
They were glancing triumphantly at each other—the father with a new friendliness for the son—as Gilbert went out of the room. In the hall he stumbled upon Simon Quarle; was seized upon by that gentleman with the one inevitable question.
"What are you going to do?"
"I'm going to settle the matter—once and for all—with the girl," said Gilbert; and with a new feeling that he was being goaded into this thing went on to find her.
He found her, after some inquiries, just where he had expected her to be; she was wandering alone in the warm summer evening in that newer garden that had so eclipsed the old one. For a little time they walked side by side there; there seemed to be no actual need for words. He had told himself, as he came out of the house, that he would have done this night with the mad business; he told himself now, as he saw her face in the light of the stars, that it must go on. And even while he said that the natural man sprang up in him—the man who would not easily or lightly give way, and would no longer be robbed with impunity. Not in any spirit of meanness, but because of the dastardly fashion in which these people held out this innocent girl as their bait and their bribe.
Almost it seemed, in that quiet garden under the stars, that the two were alone. So that presently they stopped, with hand strangely holding hand; and it seemed almost that this new Bessie of the bright eyes was a woman. Her dreams had come true; the friend who had told her that they might some day come true was here with her, alone under the shining heavens. It was a matter of whispers—just the simple matter that it always must be in such an hour.