y well, thanks. How are you?'" said Wyvern
with a rueful laugh. "I'm not getting on at all."

"No. And I don't suppose you ever will."

Wyvern stiffened. The other had never used that tone towards him
before.

"That sounds nice, and friendly, and cheering," he answered coldly.
"May I ask why you happen to hold that opinion?"

"Because you haven't got it in you," rapped out Le Sage. He was nettled
at a certain spice of _hauteur_ that the other had infused into his tone
and manner. Moreover, he was nervous, and a commingling of nervousness
and irritation is a very bad equipment indeed for the starting upon a
difficult and delicate discussion. Wyvern, for his part, was the more
sensitive to the bluntness of the statement, in that at the back of his
mind lurked a misgiving that the speaker might be stating no more than
the truth. Nothing he had ever touched had succeeded. He was no fool
in the matter of intellect, but--somehow--he had never quite managed to
"get there," and the consciousness of this was the secret canker of his
life. He was disappointed, but not yet soured. In time he might come
to be that.

"Are you quite sure of your ground in making that flattering statement?"
he said, mustering great self-control--for this sort of talk was not at
all what he was used to. Decidedly Le Sage was straining his privileges
as father-in-law elect to a dangerous point.

"Well, I don't know. Only that events seem to bear it out most
remarkably. Got rid of that mortgage on your place yet?"

"You know I haven't."

"Well, they were going to foreclose, weren't they? And if they do, it's
tantamount to selling you up. Oh, I know. Of course, it would be no
damn business of mine under ordinary circumstances. Under existing ones
it is. I'm thinking of Lalante."

"Great minds jump together then, for so am I. In fact, I'm thinking of
her every day, every moment of my life."

"If you were to think a little more of her interests, then, it would be
better all round.--For instance--I don't say it with any wish to be
inhospitable, mind!--but by the time you get back you'll have been about
twenty-fours hours away from home, and that quite unnecessarily. That's
not the way to run a farm--and especially one like yours. I don't
wonder your people get `slaag-ing,' and all the rest of it."

This was not a fair hit, thought Wyvern to himself. A decided case of
"below the belt." But he said nothing. He merely puffe