"Three," answered the General, briefly. It was evident that he was also
busy thinking.

"I ask because I met one of them in the country over Sunday," Thorpe
decided to explain.

The old soldier's eyes asked many questions in the moment of silence.
"Which one--Edith?--that is, Lady Cressage?" he enquired. "Of course--it
would have been her."

Thorpe nodded. "She made a tremendous impression upon me," he observed,
watching the father with intentness as he let the slow words fall.

"Well she might," the other replied, simply. "She's supposed to be the
most beautiful woman in England."

"Well--I guess she is," Thorpe assented, while the two men eyed each
other.

"Is the third sister unmarried?" it occurred to him to ask. The tone of
the question revealed its perfunctory character.

"Oh--Beatrice--she's of no importance," the father replied. "She goes in
for writing, and all that--she's not a beauty, you know--she lives with
an old lady in Scotland. The oldest daughter--Blanche--she has some good
looks of her own, but she's a cat. And so you met Edith! May I ask where
it was?"

"At Hadlow House--Lord Plowden's place, you know."

The General's surprise at the announcement was undoubted. "At
Plowden's!" he repeated, and added, as if half to himself, "I thought
that was all over with, long ago."

"I wish you'd tell me about it," said Thorpe, daringly. "I've made it
plain to you, haven't I? I'm going to look out for you. And I want you
to post me up, here, on some of the things that I don't understand. You
remember that it was Plowden who introduced you to me, don't you? It was
through him that you got on the Board. Well, certain things that
I've seen lead me to suppose that he did that in order to please your
daughter. Did you understand it that way?"

"It's quite likely, in one sense," returned the General. He spoke with
much deliberation now, weighing all his words. "He may have thought
it would please her; he may not have known how little my poor affairs
concerned her."

"Well, then," pursued Thorpe, argumentatively, "he had an object in
pleasing her. Let me ask the question--did he want to marry her?"

"Most men want to marry her," was the father's non-committal response.
His moustache lifted itself in the semblance of a smile, but the blue
eyes above remained coldly vigilant.

"Well--I guess that's so too," Thorpe remarked. He made a fleeting
mental note that there was something about the General which