he won't take it?"

He started to pace up and down the room. "That's your beastly America,
where everything goes by freaks--where everything is queer and
inconsequent and tortuous, and you can't pin any one down."

"It seems to me, on the contrary, that you have every one pinned down.
You've got everything your own way, and yet you aren't satisfied. Peter
has taken himself off; old Cousin Vic has paid the debts; and Olivia is
ready to go to church and marry you on the first convenient day. What
more can you ask?"

"That's what _she_ said, by Jove!--the old Marquise. She said the
question would never be raised unless I raised it."

Drusilla tried to laugh. "Eh, bien? as she'd say herself."

He paused in front of her. "Eh, bien, there is something else; and," he
added, tapping his forehead sharply, "I'll be hanged if I know what it
is."

She was about to say something more when the sound of the shutting of
the street door stopped her. There was much puffing and stamping, with
shouts for Jane to come and take an umbrella.

"I say, that's your governor. I'll go and talk to him."

He went without another look at her. She steadied herself with the tips
of her fingers on the tea-table, in order not to swoon. She knew she
wouldn't swoon; she only felt like it, or like dying. But all she could
do was limply to pour herself out an extra cup of tea and drink it.

* * * * *

In the library Ashley was taking heart of grace. He had come to ask
advice, but he was really pointing out the things that were in his
favor. He repeated Drusilla's summing-up of them almost word for word.

"You see, as far as that goes, I've everything my own way. No question
will be raised unless I raise it. The fellow has taken himself off; the
Marquise has most generally assumed the family liabilities; and Olivia
is ready to come to church with me and be married on the first
convenient day. I should be satisfied with that, now shouldn't I?"

The old man nodded. "Your difficulties do seem to have been smoothed
out."

He sat, fitting the tips of his fingers together and swinging his leg,
in his desk-chair. The light of the green-shaded desk-lamp alone lit up
the room. In the semi-obscurity porcelains and potteries gleamed like
crystals in a cave. Ashley paced the floor, emerging from minute to
minute out of the gloom into the radiance of the lamp.

"I'm not called on to go poking behind things to see what's there