“Really, William,” broke in Mrs. Graham-Shute, in an agony, “I don’t know how you can be so absurd. How can it matter to you who is in one part of a large house like this, when you are far away in the other?” “Oh! of course, it’s all right as long as he’s safely locked up,” said her husband, as he helped himself to an olive, with more attention to that than to the discussion in hand. “But at my time of life a man prefers to die a natural death, and not to run the chance of being tomahawked in his bed.” Luckily the young people took this as a joke, and laughed; so that difficulty was got over. But when they had got as far as the sweets, the doomed man began again: “By-the-bye, Bradfield,” he asked casually, as he tried to make up his mind between orange-jelly and ice-pudding, “what’s become of those two fellows who were out in the bush with you?” “Don’t know what two fellows you mean,” answered Mr. Bradfield, in a tone which would have warned off any person less obtuse. “I met a good many fellows when I was out there.” By this time Mr. Graham-Shute had caught his wife’s eye, seen her frowns, watched her agonised attempts to kick his foot under the table; but he was as quietly obstinate in his way as she was loudly determined in hers, so he glared at her across the flowers, and persisted in his ill-advised remarks. “Oh! come, you must know. Two fellows who went out with you, or whom you met soon after you got out there, and chummed up with. Marrable--yes, Alfred Marrable was the name of the one, and----” Here he paused, trying to recollect the second name. “I can’t remember the name of the other. What’s become of them? What’s become of Marrable?” Mrs. Graham-Shute could hardly have been trusted alone with her husband with a weapon in her hand at that moment. For she saw that the rich cousin from whom so much was expected was looking as much displeased as only a sallow-faced and black-haired man can look. If William were going on like this, they might just as well settle at John-o’-Groat’s as at Wyngham. John Bradfield no longer pretended, however, to have forgotten the existence of his old chums. “Dead, I believe, both of them,” he answered, curtly. “Did no good, either of them.” “And what was the name of the other man?” “Don’t remember.” William looked at him incredulously, though he could not go so far as to contradict him. His wife rushed in to the rescue. “And what are we going to do to pass the time away between this and Friday?” she asked, with a great assumption of buoyancy and good spirits. “We ought to try to ‘get up’ something, ought we not?”