be of extraordinary quickness, but never quicker than when fear lends her wings. It seemed to Athlyne that she made but one jump from where she stood through the door-way. He could remember afterwards the flash of her bare heels as she turned in closing the door behind her.
"Now Sir!" Colonel Ogilvie's voice was stern to deadliness as he spoke. Athlyne realised its import. He felt that he was bound hand and foot, and knew that his part of the coming struggle would have to be passive. He braced himself to endure. Still, the Colonel's question had to be answered. The onus of beginning the explanation had been thrust upon him. It was due to Joy that there should be no delay on his part in her vindication. Almost sick at heart with apprehension he began:
"There has been no fault on Joy's part!" The instant he had spoken, the look of bitter haughtiness which came on Colonel Ogilvie's face warned him that he had made a mistake. To set the error right he must know what he had to meet; and so he waited.
"We had better, I think, leave Miss Ogilvie's name out of our conversation.… And I may perhaps remind you, sir, that I am the best judge of my daughter's conduct. When I have said anything to my daughter's detriment it will be quite time for a stranger to interfere on her behalf.… It is of your conduct, sir, that I ask—demand explanation!"
Athlyne would have liked to meet a speech of this kind with a blow. In the case of any other man he would have done so: but this man was Joy's father, and in all circumstances must be treated as such. He felt in a vague sort of way—a background of thought rather than thought itself—that his manhood was being tested, and by a fiery test. Come what might, he must be calm, or at least be master of himself; or else bitter woe would come to Joy. Of course it would come—perhaps had come already to himself; but to that he was already braced.
Colonel Ogilvie was skilled in the deadly preliminaries to
