"Sentimental, quixotic, and all that sort of thing, eh?" said Jackson, and the girl flushed. "He has never been sentimental with me," she said, but did not deceive the student of men. When the train had left the station, he drove straightaway to Devonshire Street. Bones was in his study, reading, or pretending to read, and the last person he expected to see that evening was Mr. Jackson Hyane. But the welcome he gave to that most unwelcome visitor betrayed neither his distrust nor his frank dislike of the young well-groomed man in evening-dress who offered him his hand with such a gesture of good fellowship. "Sit down, Mr.--er----" said Bones. There was a cold, cold feeling at his heart, a sense of coming disaster, but Bones facing the real shocks and terrors of life was a different young man from the Bones who fussed and fumed over its trifles. "I suppose you wonder why I have come to see you, Mr. Tibbetts," said Hyane, taking a cigarette from the silver box on the table. "I rather wonder why I have the nerve to see you myself. I've come on a very delicate matter." There was a silence. "Indeed?" said Bones a little huskily, and he knew instinctively what that delicate matter was. "It is about Marguerite," said Mr. Hyane. Bones inclined his head. "You see, we have been great pals all our lives," went on Jackson Hyane, pulling steadily at the cigarette--"in fact, sweethearts." His keen eyes never left the other's face, and he read all he wanted to know. "I am tremendously fond of Marguerite," he went on, "and I think I am not flattering myself when I say that Marguerite is tremendously fond of me. I haven't been especially fortunate, and I have never had the money which would enable me to offer Marguerite the kind of life which a girl so delicately nurtured should have." "Very admirable," said Bones, and his voice came to his own ears as the voice of a stranger. "A few days ago," Mr. Hyane went on, "I was offered a tea plantation for fourteen thousand pounds. The prospects were so splendid that I went to a financier who is a friend of mine, and he undertook to provide the money, on which, of course, I agreed to pay an interest. The whole future, which had been so black, suddenly became as bright as day. I came to Marguerite, as you saw, with the news of my good luck, and asked her if she would be my wife." Bones said nothing; his face was a mask. "And now I come to my difficulty, Mr. Tibbetts," said Hyane. "This afternoon Marguerite and I played upon you a little deception which I hope you will forgive." "Certainly, certainly" mumbled Bones, and gripped the arms of his chair the tighter. "When I took Marguerite to lunch to-day," said Hyane, "it was to be--married." "Married!" repeated Bones dully, and Mr. Hyane nodded.