“If I hadn’t, why should I have come here?” replied her brother, giving short puffs at his pipe. “You know I feel awfully out of this sort of thing—an abominably lazy lot.” Grip, who with the magnificent patience of the strong had long been putting up with an inquisitive and infuriating fly, now relieved his feelings with a successful snap. Cynthia laughed bitterly. “You won’t get her so easily as that,” she said by way of illustration. “And why should I want you to? Has it never occurred to you, my dear brother, that I might prefer you better unmarried. It’s a slackening sort of thing at best for a man, and we’ve always roughed it together, haven’t we, Geoff? Pretty cosily, too, I think.” “You might get married yourself,” he said gloomily. The girl suggestively lit a cigarette. “I don’t think so, Geoff,” she said with a queer little laugh. “Has it never occurred to you that I’m thirty, and you’ve never been particularly keen on it before?” “I’m not now—but I think it’s a good thing for a girl.” “You mean for a man, don’t you?” He looked at her quietly. “You’re not like yourself to-day, Sis,” he said gently. “What’s wrong?” “You’re trying to marry Muriel Dallerton. She’s in love with Jack Hurstly, whom she’s trying to marry to that emotional little Gladys thing. Meanwhile, unless they are all very careful, Edith le Mentier means to play her own game with them all.” “How do you know Miss Dallerton’s in love with Hurstly?” asked the doctor, savagely ignoring the rest of the remarks. She turned on him with mocking eyes. “She is interested in his conversation,” she said, and they both burst out laughing. Grip placed his head massively on her hands and looked both question and reproach at her. “His business, Grip,” she said, “is to get perfectly rested, not to tread on lazy people’s corns, and to see as much as possible of the right young lady. As for me, Grip”—she dropped some inconveniently heated ashes on his pink nose, which made him shake his head and blink severely like a shocked old lady—“where do I come in? Well, I have my own little game to play. And here’s dear Edith in a fresh pink gown. Let’s go and meet her—she’s so fond of us both. And you——” she looked back with a whimsical tenderness at her brother, “just go down to the river and find your young lady, only for Heaven’s sake don’t glare at her like that!” CHAPTER IX “It is sometimes possible to say ‘No,’ but hard to live up to it.”