The light dazzled her as she came into the warm room, in the midst of this conference. Colonel Hayward started forward to meet her, and his wife rose from her chair. But Andrew did not budge. In his world no such respectful movement was thought of; and in times of excitement he had not leisure to think, nor note what others did.
‘Joyce, why are you here?’ her father said hastily.
‘Joyce, you will come with me,’ said Mrs. Hayward. ‘Let the gentlemen settle this matter. Come with me.’
‘Joyce,’ said Andrew, ‘in justice to me you will remain here.’
She stood looking from one to another with eyes still wild with her secret dreams and projects, which no one suspected, and the drops of cold dew glittering in her hair. ‘Father,’ she said, ‘you know I must stay. I cannot leave it to you, as if—as if—you had known it all the time.’
‘Joyce sees what is just,’ said Andrew. ‘There was neither father nor mother between us. She decided for herself, and she will have to decide for herself again. Cornel, leave her alone.’ He spoke with great composure in his ordinary tone. ‘I will take no answer from you, but I’ll abide by what she says.’
‘She is under age,’ said Colonel Hayward. ‘Sir, if you were a little better acquainted with ordinary rules, you would know it is her father only who has the right to reply to you.’
‘And how do you know, Cornel, that she is under age? Were you there when she was born? Were you near at hand to see your child? What do you know about her more than any passer-by?’
‘Sir!’ cried Colonel Hayward, stammering with indignation, ‘you presume upon the shelter of my roof, and on being beneath—beneath my notice.’
‘Not beneath being your son-in-law,’ Andrew said.
‘Joyce,’ said Mrs. Hayward angrily, ‘either put a stop to this
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 at once, or come with me and let your father settle it. You make everything worse by being here.’
Joyce stood between them trembling, unable to command, as she had once so vainly thought she could, the situation in which she found herself. Oh, how much easier to fly, either by the dark river or the darker country! ‘I will respect my father,’ she said, ‘in everything—in everything—but——’
The last word did not reach the Colonel’s ear. He drew her hand within his arm. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he said. ‘Then it is all right. Mr. Halliday, or whatever your name is, there must be no more of this. I might lose my temper. I might forget that you are under my roof. Don’t you hear what my daughter has said? In such a matter a gentleman gives way at once. It’s no question of love.’ He pressed Joyce’s trembling hand in his arm. ‘If you’ve any regard for her, sir, or for your own character, you’ll go away and disturb her no more.’
Andrew had risen slowly to his feet. He came forward with his hand raised, as if he were about to address a class. ‘You’ll observe,’ he said, ‘that the circumstances only, and not the persons, are changed. It was a question of love six months ago. I was a man in a good position, my father very respectable, a little money in the family. And she was Joyce, a female teacher, with nobody to stand for her but Peter Matheson, a ploughman.’
‘You insult me, sir,’ cried Colonel Hayward—‘you insult my daughter!’ He held her hand close, pressing it in his to console her. ‘My poor Joyce, my poor child!’ he exclaimed.
‘Nevertheless,’ said Andrew, with composure, ‘it is true. Joyce knows that it is true. My mother, who expresses herself strongly, put it in other words: It was said I was throwing myself away. I did not think so; but that being the case, Cornel, you need not think I will be daunted because she is your daughter, or any man’s daughter. She’s Joyce—and engaged to me.’
‘Leave my house, sir,’ cried the Colonel. ‘You have insulted my child. For that there is no excuse and no pardon. Leave my house.’
‘Father,’ said Joyce, ‘it’s no insult—it is all true. I am always Joyce, whatever I am besides. And when I was poor, it was thought a—credit to me. He should not have said it, but it’s true. I never thought of that, and he should not have said it: but it’s true. He held out his hand to me when I was—beneath him.’
‘Joyce!’
‘Yes, I see it all, though I did not think of it then. Oh,
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 excuse him! He does not know a man should never say that! They do it and think no harm where we come from. We were common folk. He did me honour, and am I to do him discredit? I cannot, I cannot. I must keep to my word.’
‘Joyce, for heaven’s sake, don’t act like a mad woman! Come away with me and let them settle it,’ cried Mrs. Hayward, seizing her arm on the other side.
‘Joyce behaves just as I should have expected from her,’ said Andrew, facing this agitated group with his own supreme self-possession and calm. ‘I knew I could not be deceived. I am willing to make every allowance for your feelings, Cornel. You naturally look for a richer man than me to be your daughter’s husband. I respect even the prejudices of a man like you. But there is no real reason to be disturbed about that. I am a young man. I have always been successful, so far as has been in my power. There is no need for me to remain in the humble place I now fill. With your interest and my own merits——’
‘Good Lord!’ the Colonel cried. He dropped his daughter’s arm in his consternation, and stood with his lips apart, with a stare of horror.
‘My own merits,’ repeated Andrew, ‘I think we might soon so modify the circumstances that you need object no longer. I am not afraid of the circumstances,’ he said, with a smile of complaisance. ‘You can tell your father, Joyce, what testimonials——’
‘Father,’ said Joyce eagerly, with a burning blush, ‘he is to be excused. That is how they think where—where we came from. He is—not a gentleman: we were—common folk. Father, he means it all right, though he does not know. He’s good, though—though he speaks another language.’ Her own horror and dismay took the form of apology. She was roused by her consternation into full and eager life.
‘And you hold by this man, Joyce, and you plead for him!’ Colonel Hayward cried.
‘You will understand, Cornel,’ said Andrew, who had drawn himself up indignantly, and sacrificed all the advantage of his self-possession in sudden discomposure and resentment, ‘that I ask nobody to plead for me. Joyce has been carried away with trying to please both parties. She is sacrificing me to soothe you down. Women will do such things; they will not learn. But for my part, I reject her excuses. I’ll have no forbearance on that score,’ cried Andrew, holding up his head and throwing back his shoulders. ‘I stand upon my own merits as between man and man.
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’
Then the Joyce of other days found words—not the tremulous girl, all strange in strange places, who was Colonel Hayward’s daughter, but the swift speaking, high-handed Joyce, the possible princess, the lady born of Janet’s cottage. ‘Oh,’ she cried, her words pouring forth on a sudden passionate breath, ‘how dare you bring up your merits here, and all your worldly thoughts! My old grandfather was but a ploughman, but he was a gentleman like my father. He would have put you to the door if you had said all that to him. And you stand before a man that has fought, and has the Queen’s medals on his breast—that has been wounded in battle, and faced cannon and sword; and before a lady that has no knowledge of the ways of common folk; and before me, that you said you loved; and you stand up and tell them of the female teacher that you held out your hand to, and of your merits, that make you good enough for the best—for Colonel Hayward’s daughter, that is a great soldier, a great captain, far too noble and great to put you to the door like Peter Matheson. Oh, Andrew Halliday, for shame, for shame!—you, after all the books you have read, and all the fine words you have said. I am ashamed myself,’ said Joyce, turning from him with a proud despair, ‘for I thought that Shakespeare and all the poets would make a gentleman even out of the commonest clay.’
Andrew bore this without quailing, with a smile on his face. When she stopped, he drew a long breath, and turned with an explanatory air to Colonel Hayward. ‘That is just one of her old tirades,’ he said.
The Colonel paid him no attention: he put his arm round his daughter, as tremulous as she was. ‘Joyce,’ he said faltering— ‘Joyce, my dear child, you see it all. You see through him, and—and all of us. Thank God that it’s all over now!’
Joyce drew back from him, trembling with the reaction from her own excitement. The flush that had given her a temporary brilliancy and force faded away. ‘But yet that alters nothing,’ she said.
Mrs. Hayward put her hand upon the girl’s arm with an impatient pressure. ‘Do you mean that you are going to marry that man, Joyce?’
‘Mr. Halliday,’ said the Colonel, ‘I hope, after what my daughter has said, that you will see the inexpediency of—of continuing this discussion. She has her ideas of honour, which are a little overstrained—overstrained, as is perhaps natural; but she sees all the discrepancies—all the—— You know, you must see that it’s quite impossible. My consent you will never get—never!
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 and as for Joyce, she will not—you can see by what she has said—go against me.’
‘She will never go against her word.’
‘Oh, this is endless!’ the Colonel cried. ‘We may go on contradicting each other till doomsday. You understand that I will hear no more, and that Joyce, as she has told you, will hear no more.’
‘She may object to my manners, Cornel, but she will keep her word to me,’ said Andrew, regaining all the force of his conviction. ‘But, as you say, it is little use bandying words. I will withdraw. I have made a long journey for very little—not half-a-dozen words by ourselves with the young lady to whom I am engaged to be married. But I will not keep up a needless discussion. She understands me, and you understand. If you meet me in a friendly spirit, everything may yet be arranged for the best; if not, she will be of age at least in a year, and we will have no need of your consent. Joyce,’ he said, suddenly, making a quick step towards her, seizing her hand, ‘I’ll bid you good-bye, my dearest. You’ll mind your honour and duty to me. Rich or poor, high or low, makes no difference. You have my word, and I have yours. Have you any message for the old folk.’
‘Andrew!’ she said, trembling. She had shrunk back for the first moment, but now held herself upright, very............