"Good evening."
Crestfallen and angry Hardy moved to the door, pausing with his hand on it as the captain spoke again.
"One word more," said the older man, gazing at him oddly as he stroked his grey beard; "if ever you try to come bothering me with your talk again I'll forbid you the house."
"Forbid me the house?" repeated the astonished Hardy.
"That's what I said," replied the other; "that's plain English, isn't it?"
Hardy looked at him in bewilderment; then, as the captain's meaning dawned upon him, he stepped forward impulsively and, seizing his hand, began to stammer out incoherent thanks.
"You'd better clear before I alter my mind," said Captain Nugent, roughly. "I've had more than enough of you. Try the garden, if you like."
He took up a paper from the table and resumed his seat, not without a grim smile at the promptitude with which the other obeyed his instructions.
Miss Nugent, reclining in a deck-chair at the bottom of the garden, looked up as she heard Hardy's footstep on the gravel. It was a surprising thing to see him walking down the garden; it was still more surprising to observe the brightness of his eye and the easy confidence of his bearing. It was evident that he was highly pleased with himself, and she was not satisfied until she had ascertained the reason. Then she sat silent, reflecting bitterly on the clumsy frankness of the male sex in general and fathers in particular. A recent conversation with the captain, in which she had put in a casual word or two in Hardy's favour, was suddenly invested with a new significance.
"I shall never be able to repay your father for his kindness," said Hardy, meaningly, as he took a chair near her.