rees, he was as comfortably established as was
possible. G. Selden, through the capricious intervention of Fate, if
he had not "got next" to Reuben S. Vanderpoel himself, had most
undisputably "got next" to his favourite daughter.

As the Dunholm carriage rolled down the avenue there reigned for a few
minutes a reflective silence. It was Lady Dunholm who broke it. "That,"
she said in her softly decided voice, "that is a nice girl."

Lord Dunholm's agreeable, humorous smile flickered into evidence.

"That is it," he said. "Thank you, Eleanor, for supplying me with a
quite delightful early Victorian word. I believe I wanted it. She is a
beauty and she is clever. She is a number of other things--but she is
also a nice girl. If you will allow me to say so, I have fallen in love
with her."

"If you will allow me to say so," put in Westholt, "so have I--quite
fatally."

"That," said his father, with speculation in his eye, "is more serious."

CHAPTER XXVI

"WHAT IT MUST BE TO YOU--JUST YOU!"

G. Selden, awakening to consciousness two days later, lay and stared
at the chintz covering of the top of his four-post bed through a few
minutes of vacant amazement. It was a four-post bed he was lying on,
wasn't it? And his leg was bandaged and felt unmovable. The last thing
he remembered was going down an incline in a tree-bordered avenue. There
was nothing more. He had been all right then. Was this a four-post bed
or was it not? Yes, it was. And was it part of the furnishings of a
swell bedroom--the kind of bedroom he had never been in before? Tip top,
in fact? He stared and tried to recall things--but could not, and in his
bewilderment exclaimed aloud.

"Well," he said, "if this ain't the limit! You may search ME!"

A respectable person in a white apron came to him from the other side of
the room. It was Buttle's wife, who had been hastily called in.

"Sh--sh," she said soothingly. "Don't you worry. Nobody ain't goin' to
search you. Nobody ain't. There! Sh, sh, sh," rather as if he were a
baby. Beginning to be conscious of a curious sense of weakness, Selden
lay and stared at her in a helplessness which might have been considered
pathetic. Perhaps he had got "bats in his belfry," and there was no use
in talking.

At that moment, however, the door opened and a young lady entered.
She was "a looker," G. Selden's weakness did not interfere with his
perceiving. "A looker, by gee!" She was dressed, as if for going out,