"Fairly! I know nearly everything there is to be known about Mattock. At the moment, I'm betting in my mind which'll die first--James Norman or Oscar Siegfried. That problem, however, is reserved strictly for office hours, and this is my lunch interval. What're you going to do about a job now Papa Hannassay is with the majority?" "I don't know that I need one," she said surprisingly. "He's left me everything. I heard from the solicitors this morning." Storm bit his lip. "How much?" The bluntness of his question made her stare at him. She found him unaccountably irritating that afternoon, and had half a mind to snub him, but she decided that that might be a failure. He had an amused way of laughing at people who stood on their dignity which was absolutely impossible to deal with. "Ten thousand odd--if you're so desperately interested," she said frigidly, and was speedily disconcerted. His eyes danced with quiet mockery. "I am. Desperately interested," he assured her, and his smile swept pettiness out of existence. "Susan, don't be small! It's an important question, because I always understood old Pop Hannassay was rich." "Don't be irreverent," she said severely. "_De mortuis_----" "_Nil nisi ludicrum_. And how about the dead what die in their sins?" She opened her bag and handed him the letter. He read it through carefully, and then made a note of the address of the solicitors.' "Bylom, Craill and Bylom, Suffolk House, Lester Street, Strand. I'll see 'em this afternoon. Ten thousand! Jerusalem--a few years ago old Daddy--sorry, Susan!--Lord Hannassay was worth about half a million. You ought to be rich, instead of the unreasonably proud heiress to a paltry ten thousand!" "How do you know all this?" she asked in wonder. He was not disposed to enlighten her at that moment. "There's damn little I don't know!" he boasted airily. "The snag is, it's going to take me all my time to remove just those little scraps of ignorance!" He looked at her for a moment, frowning thoughtfully, and then dropped a bolt from the blue: "When can you be married?" Her face went blank. He disregarded all the time-honoured laws governing the proper setting, manner and preliminaries for such questions. Twice he had made love to her--once, years ago, in his breezy, inconsequent manner in the kitchen of the Presidential Palace of Olvidada; for the second time, on that night when he had driven her home from Raegenssen's. And when he made love he was irresistible. On the whole, it was a proposition he should by rights have put forward long ago; yet, now that he had put it forward, the suddenness seemed alarming. It caused a queer constriction about her heart, and at the same time it brought to a head the vague and formless anger that had troubled her all day. He had been almost insulting--he broke every accepted canon for proposals. In fact, he did not propose at all: he took her for granted, and she was furious.