“Now, old chap,” went on Gerry soberly, “if you begin to muse and wonder you’ll never sleep to-night. I believe this thing comes in the light of luck for both of us. I feel twice the man I did half-an-hour ago, and I’m going to whine no more. However matters go you’re very much better off than you were this morning, and, as I said before, what’s to prove that either Gwen or Vi may not come back to us again? Heaps of things may happen in a year. Why,” he went on smiling, “with the influence of the Heatherslies at my back I mean to get an _attachéship_ and marry Vi myself. At any rate I believe now that the game’s _not_ over. I’ll be your best man yet, unless we’re both married together, and I won’t say that’s not possible.” It was good to hear him say it, but all the time I was telling myself frantically that it was rot—that I mustn’t listen to him, and I backed my inward despondency with the spoken word. “But even now,” I demurred, “what am I but a pauper peer? Fifty thousand acres of bog are mine, and a few English farms. What’s that to Denvarre’s forty thousand pounds a year and Gleivdon? I’d take an offer of five thousand pounds a year for all I possess.” He rose and slapped me on the back cheerily, smiling as he reached for his hat. “There, there,” said he, “that’s quite enough, Jack. I’m off, and you’re going to tumble in. You’ll be twice the man in the morning. You’re upset with it all, and to-morrow when you’re a bit steadied you’ll see it all in another light. We’ll have a long collogue about it then, and you’ll know what you’re going to do. Night-night, old man, and don’t dream if you can help it,” and he passed across to his rooms whistling, though I could but notice it was a very reedy, quivering attempt. In spite of Gerry’s veto I did dream that night, seeing Denvarre in many a heroic attitude save Gwen from desperate perils by flood and field—masterful deeds which I could only watch in restless helplessness. I rode a nightmare which trampled my every aspiration in the mud of desolation, leaving me to awake heavy-eyed and low-spirited, but yet, as Gerry predicted, with some of the hope that each new day brings. And after my bath—and what a mental as well as bodily tonic a cold bath is—I was chastened, maybe, but myself again. I filled my clothes without feeling three sizes too small for them, and ate my breakfast with appetite. As I was at it, Barker brought in a telegram. I ripped the dirty orange-colored paper and read, “Please call at your earliest convenience. Meadows and Crum.”