"What I have to say is short and clear. I don't care twopence about your affairs, or your conduct, but I do very much care about my niece's happiness; and if you any longer decline to take the answer she has given you, and continue to cause her the slightest trouble, I'll make it a personal matter with you. Good-_night_!" he added, with an inflamed visage, and a stamp on the floor, thundering his valediction. And forth he went to pay his brief visit to his brother--not caring twopence, as he said, what Lord Wynderbroke thought of him. Sir Reginald had got into his dressing-gown. He was not now in any pain to speak of, and expressed great surprise at the sudden appearance of his brother. "You'll take something, won't you?" "Nothing, thanks," answered David. "I came to beg a favour." "Oh! did you? You find me very poorly," said the baronet, in a tone that seemed to imply, "You might easily kill me, by imposing the least trouble just now." "You'll be all the better, Reginald, for this little attack; it is so comfortably established in your foot." "Comfortably! I wish you felt it," said Sir Reginald, sharply; "and it's confoundedly late. Why didn't you come to dinner?" David laughed good-humouredly. "You forgot, I think, to ask me," said he. "Well, well, you know there is always a chair and a glass for you; but won't it do to talk about any cursed thing you wish to-morrow? I--I never, by any chance, hear anything agreeable. I have been tortured out of my wits and senses all day long by a tissue of pig-headed, indescribable frenzy. I vow to Heaven there's a conspiracy to drive me into a mad-house, or into my grave; and I declare to my Maker, I wish the first time I'm asleep, some fellow would come in and blow my brains out on the pillow." "I don't know an easier death," said David; and his brother, who meant it to be terrific, did not pretend to hear him. "I have only a word to say," he continued, "a request you have never refused to other friends, and, in fact, dear Reginald, I ventured to take it for granted you would not refuse me; so I have taken Alice into town, to make me a little visit of a day or two." "You haven't taken Alice--you don't mean--she's not gone?" exclaimed the baronet, sitting up with a sudden perpendicularity, and staring at his brother as if his eyes were about to leap from their sockets. "I'll take the best care of her. Yes, she _is_ gone," said David. "But my dear, excellent, worthy--why, curse you, David, you can't possibly have done anything so clumsy! Why, you forgot that Wynderbroke is here; how on earth am I to entertain Wynderbroke without her?" "Why, it is exactly because Lord Wynderbroke is here, that I thought it the best time for her to make me a visit." "I protest to Heaven, David, I believe you're deranged! Do you the least know what you are saying?"