“I shall get some appointment where I can grow gray with respectability; my people can manage that, and they will. It is a scandal for a baronet to starve, you know. Why, you silly child, you are crying! Thank Heaven, Annie! I didn’t think you were so fond of me.” “I’m not fond of you--I’m disgusted with you!” said Annie, fiercely, stiffening herself rigidly as he leaned toward her. “Why, do you know that even Harry shows more spirit than that?” “What makes you say ‘even Harry?’” asked Sir George, quietly. “I could have told you long ago that Harry had pluck and spirit enough for six, in spite of his impossible manners and boorish conversation. If anybody buys back the Grange, it will be he.” Annie listened with her cheeks tingling. “When did you first begin to think all that of him?” she asked, in a low voice. “I knew, when we were lads together, that there was something in him; but I own I lost sight of the fact while he led his loose, lazy life at the Grange after you had left him. But, when you left the Grange this last time--more than two months ago--he let me see his best side again one night when we were talking about you.” “About me?” whispered Annie, breathlessly. “Yes; he told me he loved you with all his soul, and he meant to win you back to him if he had to wait ten years. And I believe him.” “George,” said she, in a low, uncertain voice, raising her eyes to his, after a pause, “he has done it already. But--but he won’t give me a chance of telling him so. He won’t let me know where he is, and--and indeed he doesn’t care for me as much as you think; for, if he did, he couldn’t make appointments with--with other women,” sobbed she, with her head in her hands. “Are you sure that he does, Annie?” asked her brother-in-law, earnestly. “Quite sure. I--I overheard it,” quavered she. “Don’t be so certain about it yet, my poor child! If ever a man was in solemn earnest, Harry was when he spoke to me about you, and he is far too pig-headed to change like that in a few weeks. He swore to me that you were the only woman in the world for him, and he should never look at another again. Trust me, don’t make up your mind that he is faithless to you yet. His keeping away from you means something more than that, or I’m much mistaken in him.” Annie allowed herself to be somewhat comforted by these words, and she promised George, who of course managed to allow himself as many--if not more--of the small comforts of life as he had done before his ruin, to accompany him to Ascot in ten days’ time, to play good angel to him and raise his spirits.