have secured the prize, and I congratulate you.
Whether it's fair to the girl is another question."

In moments of agitation a man instinctively feels for his pipe. It was
now Dornington's turn to fill and light.

"Of course it's your own affair," said Guillemot, chafing at the
silence, "but I think you might have given the heiress a chance.
However, it's each for himself, I suppose, and----"

"Heiress?"

"Yes, the heiress--the Millionairess, if you prefer it. I've been
looking into her affairs: it _is_ just about a million."

"Rather cheap chaff, isn't it?"

"It's a very lucky thing for you," said Stephen savagely. "Perhaps I
ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington--I see we look
at the thing differently--but I must say, I shouldn't have cared to grab
at such luck myself."

Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at
his friend.

"I see," he said slowly. "And her fortune is really so much? I didn't
think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it's no good
making a row about it; I don't want to quarrel with my best friend. Go
along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to
Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she'll show you where I live.
I'm going for a bit of a walk."

Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund's beckoning hand at
the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading
to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew
Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone
bag in his hands.

Stephen lunched at the cottage. The girls served the lunch themselves;
they had no hired service in the little cottage. Rosamund exerted
herself to talk gaily.

As the meal ended, a fair-haired child stood in the door that opened
straight from the street into the sitting-room, after the primitive
fashion of Lymchurch.

"'E gave me a letter for you," said the child, and Rosamund took it,
giving in exchange some fruit from the pretty disordered table.

"Excuse me," she said, with the rose in her cheeks because she saw the
hand-writing was the hand-writing she had seen in many pencilled verses.
She read the letter, frowned, read it again. "Constance, you might get
the coffee."

Constance went out. Then the girl turned on her guest.

"This is _your_ doing," she said with a concentrated fury that brought
him to his feet facing her. "Why did you come and me