"It had to be, my dear fellow," replied Ted eagerly. "To begin with, we were engaged rather hurriedly in order to please her grandfather--chiefly; and I--I felt I had no right to presume on it; it might never have come to anything. It couldn't for a long time, for I wasn't in a position to marry." Here his face fell, and he threw down the pen with which he had been fiddling in sudden impatience. "For the matter of that, I'm not in it now. These confounded interruptions have played the dickens, and we shall have to begin in a small way; for she hasn't a penny. The place is over-mortgaged and even the furniture has to be sold. In fact, if it doesn't realise a decent price, I might be let in. Where was I? Oh! yes. Then in February, just as I was in the throes of a really good thing, I was telegraphed for again. I had been down twice before, and really, only because the old man was not satisfied, that we would keep to our engagement. So----" he paused. "Well?" remarked Ned. "I took down a marriage license with me--it was absolutely necessary, you see, that I should get away again as soon as I could, and I thought, if the worst came to the worst, it would calm the old man to feel that we were married. So you see there was no time to give any one any notice." "And you were married," remarked Ned again in the same clear, hard voice. "Yes! The rector married us in the old man's room, with Martha and him as witnesses, half an hour before I started. That is really the whole story--exactly how it came about." "And you went back, when?" asked Ned Blackborough quickly. "I never went back. It was awfully important that I should have a free hand, and that is how it came--about the telegrams, I mean--I had purposely left no address----" The tapping of Ned's stick on the floor, which had been going on as he sat, his elbow on his knees, listening, ceased. "Then you mean to say," he said slowly, rising as he spoke, "that when I saw--Aura--the other day--she----" Suddenly he laughed--"Good-bye, Ted; you're not a bad sort of a chap on the whole--but you have the devil's own luck! If I had only known--if I had guessed that she----" His voice rose in sudden anger, then paused. What was the good? "Are you going to finish your sentence, Lord Blackborough?" flared up Ted in anger also. "Yes!" replied Ned without an instant's hesitation, reverting to his usual tone, "I am going to finish it. I am going to tell you the truth--though you haven't told it to me. There is no use in your not facing it, man. Aura doesn't by right belong to you--she belongs to me. If I'd known then--when I was at Cwnfairnog, I mean--what I know now, I--I should have tried to take her away from all your cursed money-getting even then. It's different now ... if you make her happy. And if you don't--I--I won't be such a fool again! That's fair and square and above board. So--good-bye!"