‘Because he’s a fool,’ repeated young Askam, leaning his elbows on the balustrade of the bridge, to which they had now advanced, and staring down into the rushing brown river. The expression on the face, which the darkness concealed, was not a pleasant one. ‘Curse him!’ he muttered to himself, so low that even Gilbert did not hear him; but the river carried the sound, along with all the other messages with which it was laden, towards the sea. ‘Come along!’ said Gilbert, after a brief, silent pause. ‘There’s no use staying here any longer.’ Otho raised himself from the bridge, and they retraced their way through the silent passage, up the steep street, and to where a road to the right led in the direction of Thorsgarth. They had not spoken a word since leaving the mills. ‘I think it’s rather late for me to be going with you,’ said Gilbert, hesitating at the corner. ‘Not a bit! What’s ten o’clock? You’ve got a key, I suppose? You said you would come,’ said Otho, rapidly, and almost savagely. ‘And I want to speak to you.’ ‘Oh, I am willing, and—well, Michael will see my father again before he goes to bed—sure to. He will be leaving Balder Hall by now, I daresay. They keep early hours there.’ ‘Where there’s an old woman like that precious Aunt Martha, they must,’ said Otho. ‘Look here, Gilbert, how did your brother Michael get Magdalen Wynter to accept him?’ ‘By being the only man in the world who proposed to her, or was likely to do so,’ said Gilbert, cynically. ‘I don’t see that. She is the handsomest woman I ever saw.’ ‘She hasn’t a penny, and won’t have. She isn’t popular—but the reverse, and no man, except Michael, ever penetrates within those walls—oh, and you,’ he added, with a laugh, as he turned to Otho. ‘You haven’t accounted for it yet,’ said the latter, sullenly. ‘Well, say she was in love with him.’ ‘In love with my eye!’ Gilbert laughed again. ‘I give it up,’ said he. ‘It’s a conundrum I have often set myself, to no purpose. Michael is ten thousand times too good for her; but that’s nothing to the point. I don’t know why she took him.’ ‘She ordered me off this afternoon, because he was coming to dinner,’ Otho said, in a voice of choking anger. ‘She told me my whole body wasn’t worth his little finger. She——’ ‘You might be in love with her yourself,’ suggested Gilbert; and, indeed, a less astute observer might have been struck with the same idea. ‘I’ll be hanged if I am—insolent minx!’ retorted Otho, savagely. ‘No girl shall behave to me as she has done, with impunity. She shall pay for it. But, tell me, how long were they in making it up?’