Old John Bannister returned that night. Learning from Bailey'strembling lips the tremendous events that had been taking place in hisabsence, he was first irritated, then coldly amused. His coolnessdampened, while it comforted, Bailey.

　　A bearer of sensational tidings likes to spread a certain amount ofdismay and terror; but, on the other hand, it was a relief to him tofind that his father appeared to consider trivial a crisis which, toBailey, had seemed a disaster without parallel in the annals ofAmerican social life.

　　"She said she was going to _marry_ him!"Old Bannister opened the nut-cracker mouth that always had theappearance of crushing something. His pale eyes glowed for an instant.

　　"Did she?" he said.

　　"She seemed very--ah--determined.""_Did_ she!"Silence falling like a cloud at this point, Bailey rightly conjecturedthat the audience was at an end and left the room. His father bit theend off a cigar and began to smoke.

　　Smoking, he reviewed the situation, and his fighting spirit rose tograpple with it. He was not sorry that this had happened. His was apatriarchal mind, and he welcomed opportunities of exercising hisauthority over his children. It had always been his policy to rule themmasterfully, and he had often resented the fact that his daughter, bythe nature of things, was to a great extent outside his immediate rule.

　　During office hours business took him away from her. The sun never seton his empire over Bailey, but it needed a definite crisis like thepresent one to enable him to jerk at the reins which guided Ruth, andhe was glad of the chance to make his power felt.

　　The fact that this affair brought him into immediate contact with Mrs.

　　Porter added to his enjoyment. Of all the people, men or women, withwhom his business or social life had brought him into conflict, shealone had fought him squarely and retired with the honours of war. Whenhis patriarchal mind had led him to bully his late wife, it was Mrs.

　　Porter who had fought her cause. It was Mrs. Porter who openlyexpressed her contempt for his money and certain methods of making it.

　　She was the only person in his immediate sphere over whom he had nofinancial hold.

　　He was a man who liked to be surrounded by dependents, and Mrs. Porterstoutly declined to be a dependent. She moved about the world, bluntand self-sufficing, and he hated her as he hated no one else. Thethought that she had now come to grips with him and that he could besther in open fight was pleasant to him. All his life, except in hisconflicts with her, he had won. He meant to win now.

　　Bailey's apprehensions amused him. He had a thorough contempt for allactors, authors, musicians, and artists, whom he classed together inone group as men who did not count, save in so far as they gave mildentertainment to the men who, like himself, did count. The idea ofanybody taking them seriously seemed too fantastic to be considered.