ny had it been left at his disposal--and was therefore independent.

"I've given you a reason. What more do you want?" he growled.

Piers looked straight at him for a few seconds longer; then broke into
his sudden boyish laugh. "All right, sir. When shall we start?" he said.

Sir Beverley stared. "What the devil are you laughing at?" he demanded.

Piers had returned to the peeling of his walnut. "Nothing, sir," he
said airily. "At least, nothing more important than your reason for
going abroad."

"Damn your impudence!" said Sir Beverley, and then for some reason he too
began to smile. "That's settled then. We'll go to Monte Carlo, eh, Piers?
You'll like that."

"Do you think I am to be trusted at Monte Carlo?" said Piers.

"I let you go round the world by yourself while you were still an infant,
so I almost think I can trust you at Monte Carlo under my own eye,"
returned Sir Beverley.

Piers was silent. The smile had left his lips. He frowned slightly
over his task.

"Well?" said Sir Beverley, suddenly and sharply.

"Well, sir?" Piers raised his brows without looking up.

The old man brought down an impatient fist on the table. "Why can't you
say what you think?" he demanded angrily. "You sit there with your mouth
shut as if--as if--" His eyes went suddenly to the woman's face on the
wall with the red lips that smiled half-sadly, half-mockingly, and the
eyes that perpetually followed him but never smiled at all. "Confound
you, Piers!" he said. "I sometimes think that voyage round the world did
you more harm than good."

"Why, sir?" said Piers quickly.

Sir Beverley's look left the smiling, baffling face upon the wall and
sought his grandson's. "You were so mad to be off the bearing-rein,
weren't you?" he said. "So keen to feel your own feet? I thought it would
make a man of you, but I was a fool to do it. I'd better have kept you on
the rein after all."

"I should have run away if you had," said Piers. He poured himself
out a glass of wine and raised it to his lips. He looked at Sir Beverley
above it with a smile half-sad, half-mocking, and eyes that veiled his
soul. "I should have gone to the devil if you had, sir," he said,
"and--probably--I shouldn't have come back." He drank slowly, his eyes
still upon Sir Beverley's face.

When he set the glass down again he was openly laughing. "Besides, you
horsewhipped me for something or other, do you remember? It hurts to be
horsewhipped at nineteen."

Sir