"I suppose," he observed, reseating himself on the corner of the writing-table, "it would be indiscreet to inquire from what source the young lady, with a capital of one hundred pounds sterling, is at present deriving an income of apparently three or four hundred a year?" "Not only indiscreet, but positively unhealthy," said Hughie, turning a dusky red. His fingers were curling and uncurling. Mr. Haliburton directed upon him what can only be described as a depredatory eye. "Don't you think, Mr. Marrable," he said, "that it would be a good thing to--_square_ me? I could do with that five thousand. This is a censorious world, you know; and scandalous little yarns are apt to get about when a young lady accepts--_Hrrrumph!_" It was the last straw. Hughie's iron restraint snapped at last. Both his and Mr. Haliburton's impressions of the next few moments were distinctly blurred, but at the end of that period Hughie, breathing heavily and feeling as if he had just won a valuable prize in a consolation race, found himself facing Jimmy Marrable, who had entered the door just as Love (as represented by Mr. Haliburton) flew out of the window. "Hallo, Hughie!" "Hallo, Uncle Jimmy! Half a mo'!" Mr. Haliburton, seated dizzily in a rose-bed in the garden, heard Hughie's step returning to the French window above his head. A walking-stick suddenly speared itself in the soil beside him, and a pair of gloves and a Homburg hat pattered delicately down upon his upturned countenance; while Hughie's voice intimated that there was a swift and well-cushioned train back to town at six-twenty. Then, closing the window and leaving Mr. Haliburton to extract himself tenderly from his bed of roses, cursing feebly the while and ruminating bitterly upon the unreliability of proverbial expressions, Hughie turned to the room again. It had just occurred to him that in the heat of the moment he had been a trifle cavalier in his reception of a relative whom he had not seen for ten years, and who he imagined had been dead for four. Half an hour later Jimmy Marrable enquired:-- "Would it be too much to ask whom you were throwing out of the window when I came in?" "Friend of Joey's," said Hughie briefly. "And now, Uncle Jimmy," he added, with clouding brow,--the joy of battle was overpast, and the horizon was dark with the wings of all kinds of chickens coming home to roost,--"I should like to inform you that you and your financial methods have put me in a devil of a hole. I want an explanation." "Right. Fire away!"