twelfth Earl of Dreever, was feeling like a toad under the harrow.
He read the letter again, but a second perusal made it no better.
Very briefly and clearly, Molly had broken off the engagement. She
"thought it best." She was "afraid it could make neither of us
happy." All very true, thought his lordship miserably. His
sentiments to a T. At the proper time, he would have liked nothing
better. But why seize for this declaration the precise moment when
he was intending, on the strength of the engagement, to separate his
uncle from twenty pounds? That was what rankled. That Molly could
have no knowledge of his sad condition did not occur to him. He had
a sort of feeling that she ought to have known by instinct. Nature,
as has been pointed out, had equipped Hildebrand Spencer Poynt de
Burgh with one of those cheap-substitute minds. What passed for
brain in him was to genuine gray matter as just-as-good imitation
coffee is to real Mocha. In moments of emotion and mental stress,
consequently, his reasoning, like Spike's, was apt to be in a class
of its own.

He read the letter for the third time, and a gentle perspiration
began to form on his forehead. This was awful. The presumable
jubilation of Katie, the penniless ripper of the Savoy, when he
should present himself to her a free man, did not enter into the
mental picture that was unfolding before him. She was too remote.
Between him and her lay the fearsome figure of Sir Thomas, rampant,
filling the entire horizon. Nor is this to be wondered at. There was
probably a brief space during which Perseus, concentrating his gaze
upon the monster, did not see Andromeda; and a knight of the Middle
Ages, jousting in the Gentlemen's Singles for a smile from his lady,
rarely allowed the thought of that smile to occupy his whole mind at
the moment when his boiler-plated antagonist was descending upon him
in the wake of a sharp spear.

So with Spennie Dreever. Bright eyes might shine for him when all
was over, but in the meantime what seemed to him more important was
that bulging eyes would glare.

If only this had happened later--even a day later! The reckless
impulsiveness of the modern girl had undone him. How was he to pay
Hargate the money? Hargate must be paid. That was certain. No other
course was possible. Lord Dreever's was not one of those natures
that fret restlessly under debt. During his early career at college,
he had endeared himself to the local tradesmen by the m