For the first time in the dialogue Philip lost some of his self control, and coloured with anger.

`Miss Tulliver,' he said, with bitter incisiveness, `has the only grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to the middle class: she is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honour and integrity. All St Ogg's, I fancy, would pronounce her to be more than my equal.'

Wakem darted a glance of fierce question at his son, but Philip was not looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on, in a few moments, as if in amplification of his last words:

`Find a single person in St Ogg's who will not tell you that a beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself away on a pitiable object like me.'

`Not she!' said Wakem, rising again, and forgetting everything else in a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. `It would be a deuced fine match for her. It's all stuff about an accidental deformity, when a girl's really attached to a man.'

`But girls are not apt to get attached under those circumstances,' said Philip.

`Well, then,' said Wakem, rather brutally - trying to recover his previous position. `If she doesn't care for you, you might have spared yourself the trouble of talking to me about her - and you might have spared me the trouble of refusing my consent to what was never likely to happen.'

Wakem strode to the door, and, without looking round again, banged it after him.

Philip was not without confidence that his father would be ultimately wrought upon as he had expected by what had passed; but the scene had jarred upon his nerves, which were as sensitive as a woman's. He determined not to go down to dinner - he couldn't meet his father again that day. It was Wakem's habit, when he had no company at home, to go out in the evening - often as early as half-past seven; and as it was far on in the afternoon now, Philip locked up his room and went out for a long ramble, thinking he would not return until his father was out of the house again. He got into a boat, and went down the river to a favourite village, where he dined, and lingered till it was late enough for him to return. He had never had any sort of quarrel with his father before, and had a sickening fear that this contest just begun, might go on for weeks - and what might not happen in that time? He would not allow himself to define what that involuntary question meant. But if he could once be in the position of Maggie's accepted, acknowledged lover, there would be less room for vague dread. He went up to his painting room again and threw himself with a sense of fatigue into the armchair, looking round absently at the views of water and rock that were ranged around, till he fell into a doze in which he fancied Maggie was slipping down a glistening, green, slimy channel of a waterfall, and he was looking on helpless, till he was awakened by what seemed a sudden, awful crash.

It was the opening of the door, and he could hardly have dozed more than a few moments, for there was no perceptible change in the evening light. It was his father who entered, with a cigar in his mouth, and when Philip moved to vacate the chair for him, he said,

`Sit still. I'd rather walk about.'

He stalked up and down the room once or twice and then standing opposite Philip, with one hand thrust in his side-pocket, he said, as if continuing a conversation that had not been broken off,

`But this girl seems to have been fond of you, Phil, else she wouldn't have met you in that way.'

Philip's heart was beating rapidly, and a transient flush passed over his face like a gleam. It was not quite easy to speak at once.