‘You are nearly yourself again, Jasper, after your heavy fall?’ said Sir Sykes, by way of a prelude to the conversation. ‘Yes; thanks. My arm is a little troublesome, but otherwise I am getting on capitally,’ replied Jasper after an instant’s hesitation. He had hesitated in diplomatic doubt as to whether the part of an invalid would stand him in better stead than that of a flourishing convalescent, but contented himself with giving an ambiguous answer. Had Captain Prodgers or any sporting friend put the query, ‘I feel fit and well’ would have been the appropriate rejoinder; but with his parent the ex-Lancer did not care to lose any coigne of vantage-ground. ‘I am glad of it,’ mechanically returned the baronet; and then there was another pause, more awkward than the last. ‘My boy,’ said Sir Sykes, plunging with an effort into the subject nearest to his thoughts, ‘you can’t suppose that I like to see you wasting your young life in indolent inaction, or that I am blind to the fact that the quiet humdrum ways of Carbery often pall upon you.’ Jasper pricked up his ears. Here was an exordium which promised well, too well almost. Could it be possible that his father was going to sign, so to speak, his social ticket-of-leave, and to send him back where Fashion reigned supreme—to London, Newmarket, Melton? Had the Fates grown kind; and could he, Jasper Denzil, with a satisfactory bank balance, once more take his place in the constellation of the gilded youth of Britain? He opened his lazy eyes a very little wider, and looked at his father with a renewed interest in the next words that he should hear. ‘The case,’ went on Sir Sykes, ‘lies in a nutshell. You are discontented simply because you have nothing to occupy you and no one to care for. I should like very much, Jasper, to see you happily married; I should indeed.’ Jasper stared. His roseate visions of a prompt reappearance in betting-rings and military clubs were fading fast. But this novel anxiety on the part of Sir Sykes as to his son’s matrimonial future might be twisted somehow into the foundation of at least a qualified prosperity. ‘He can’t mean,’ such was Jasper’s inward soliloquy, ‘myself and my wife to be mere pensioners, living indolently here at Carbery. He must do something for us, he must indeed; unless it is an heiress he is about to suggest as a desirable daughter-in-law.’—‘I suppose I must marry, like other people, some of these days,’ said Jasper, with Pall-Mall philosophy. ‘And there is this advantage in your position,’ returned Sir Sykes, in a quick flurried manner, ‘that you need not look for fortune in a wife. The heir-expectant of Carbery can afford to disregard such matters as dowry and portion.’