t."

Major-General Kervick's prominent blue eyes had bulged forth in rage
till their appearance had disconcerted the other's gaze. They remained
still too much in the foreground, as it were, and the angry scarlets
and violets of the cheeks beneath them carried an unabated threat of
apoplexy--but their owner, after a moment's silence, made a sign with
his stiff white brows that the crisis was over. "You must remember
that--that I have a father's feelings," he gasped then, huskily.

Thorpe nodded, with a nonchalance which was not wholly affected. He had
learned what he wanted to know about this veteran. If he had the fierce
meannesses of a famished old dog, he had also a dog's awe of a stick. It
was almost too easy to terrorize him.

"Oh, I make allowances for all that," Thorpe began, vaguely. "But
it's important that you should understand me. I'm this sort of a man:
whatever I set out to do, and put my strength into it, that I do! I kill
every pheasant I fire at; Plowden will tell you that! It's a way I have.
To those that help me, and are loyal to me, I'm the best friend in
the world. To those that get in my way, or try to trip me up, I'm the
devil--just plain devil. Now then--you're getting three hundred a year
from my Company, that is to say from me, simply to oblige my friend
Plowden. You don't do anything to earn this money; you're of no earthly
use on the Board. If I chose, I could put you off at the end of the year
as easily as I can blow out this match. But I propose not only to keep
you on, but to make you independent. Why do I do that? You should ask
yourself that question. It can't be on account of anything you can do
for the Company. What else then? Why, first and foremost, because you
are the father of your daughter."

"Let me tell you the kind of man I am," said the General, inflating his
chest, and speaking with solemnity.

"Oh, I know the kind of man you are," Thorpe interrupted him, coolly. "I
want to talk now."

"It was merely," Kervick ventured, in an injured tone, "that I can be as
loyal as any man alive to a true friend."

"Well, I'll be the true friend, then," said Thorpe, with impatient
finality. "And now this is what I want to say. I'm going to be a very
rich man. You're not to say so to anybody, mind you, until the thing
speaks for itself. We're keeping dark for a few months, d'ye see?--lying
low. Then, as I say, I shall be a very rich man. Well now, I wouldn't
give a damn to be rich, unl