day Fleur had come and insisted it should be let
loose, so that it had at once bitten the cook and been destroyed. If
you let Gradman off his chair, would he bite the cook?

Checking this frivolous fancy, Soames unfolded his Marriage Settlement.
He had not looked at it for over eighteen years, not since he remade
his Will when his father died and Fleur was born. He wanted to see
whether the words "during coverture" were in. Yes, they were--odd
expression, when you thought of it, and derived perhaps from
horse-breeding! Interest on fifteen thousand pounds (which he paid her
without deducting income tax) so long as she remained his wife, and
afterwards during widowhood "dum casta"--old-fashioned and rather
pointed words, put in to insure the conduct of Fleur's mother. His Will
made it up to an annuity of a thousand under the same conditions. All
right! He returned the copies to Gradman, who took them without looking
up, swung the chair, restored the papers to their drawer, and went on
casting up.

"Gradman! I don't like the condition of the country; there are a lot of
people about without any common sense. I want to find a way by which I
can safeguard Miss Fleur against anything which might arise."

Gradman wrote the figure "2" on his blotting-paper.

"Ye-es," he said; "there's a nahsty spirit."

"The ordinary restraint against anticipation doesn't meet the case."

"Nao," said Gradman.

"Suppose those Labour fellows come in, or worse! It's these people with
fixed ideas who are the danger. Look at Ireland!"

"Ah!" said Gradman.

"Suppose I were to make a settlement on her at once with myself as
beneficiary for life, they couldn't take anything but the interest from
me, unless of course they alter the law."

Gradman moved his head and smiled.

"Aoh!" he said, "they wouldn't do tha-at!"

"I don't know," muttered Soames; "I don't trust them."

"It'll take two years, sir, to be valid against death duties."

Soames sniffed. Two years! He was only sixty-five!

"That's not the point. Draw a form of settlement that passes all my
property to Miss Fleur's children in equal shares, with antecedent
life-interests first to myself and then to her without power of
anticipation, and add a clause that in the event of anything happening
to divert her life-interest, that interest passes to the trustees, to
apply for her benefit, in their absolute discretion."

Gradman grated: "Rather extreme at your age, sir; you lose con