re you going to refuse your consent?"

"I?" Larpent shrugged his shoulders. "Are you going to give yours?"

Saltash made an elaborate gesture. "I shall bestow my blessing with both
hands."

Larpent looked at him fixedly for a few seconds. "You're a very wonderful
man, my lord," he remarked drily at length.

Saltash laughed. "Have you only just discovered that?"

Larpent drained his tumbler gravely and put it down. "All the same, I
don't believe it will come off," he said.

Saltash moved impatiently. "You always were an unbeliever. But anyone can
see they were made for each other. Of course it will come off."

"You want it to come off?" asked Larpent.

"It is my intention that it shall," said Saltash royally.

"You're playing providence in the girl's interest. Is that it?" Again
Larpent's eyes, shrewd and far-seeing, were fixed upon him. They held a
glint of humour. "It's a tricky job, my lord. You'll wish you hadn't
before you've done."

"Think so?" said Saltash.

"If you haven't begun to already," said Larpent.

Saltash looked down at him with a comical twist of the eyebrows. "You're
very analytical to-night. What's the matter?"

"Nothing," said Larpent bluntly. "Except that you're making a mistake."

"Indeed?" For a moment Saltash's look was haughty; then he began to smile
again. "I see you're burning to give your advice," he said tolerantly.
"Fire away, if it does you any good!"

Larpent's eyes, very steady under their fair, bushy brows, were still
unwaveringly upon him. "No, I don't presume to give you advice," he said.
"But I'll tell you something which you may or may not know. That young
woman you have so kindly bestowed upon me as a daughter worships the
ground you tread on, and--that being the case--she isn't very likely to
make a dazzling success of it if she marries young Bernard Brian."

He ceased to speak, and simultaneously Saltash jerked himself to his feet
with a short French oath that sounded like the snarl of an angry animal.
He went across to the windows that were thrown wide to the summer night
and stood before one of them with his head flung back in the attitude of
one who challenges the universe.

Larpent lay back in his chair with the air of a man who has said his say.
He did not even glance towards his companion, and there followed a
considerable pause before either of them spoke again.

Abruptly at length Saltash wheeled.

"Larpent!" There was something of a whip-lash qualit