XLVI.
“He's up in his room, resting from the effort.” She laughed nervously, and her father made no comment. He took off his articles, and then went creaking upstairs to Dan's room. But at the door he paused, with his hand on the knob, and turned away to his own room without entering.
Dan must have heard him; in a few minutes he came to him.
“Well, Dan,” said his father, shaking hands.
“I suppose Eunice has told you? Well, I want to tell you why it happened.”
There was something in his father that always steadied Dan and kept him to the point. He now put the whole case fairly and squarely, and his candour and openness seemed to him to react and characterise his conduct throughout. He did not realise that this was not so till his father said at the close, with mild justice, “You were to blame for letting the thing run on so at loose ends.”
“Yes, of course,” said Dan, seeing that he was. “But there was no intention of deceiving any one of bad faith—”
“Of course not.”
“I thought it could be easily arranged whenever it came to the point.”
“If you'd been older, you wouldn't have thought that. You had women to deal with on both sides. But if it's all over, I'm not sorry. I always admired Miss Pasmer, but I've been more and more afraid you were not suited to each other. Your mother doesn't know you're here?”