All the old bitterness had welled up again as his mother spoke. He, the eldest son, the credit to the family, was welcomed by his mother simply as an ally in the salvation of the young prodigal who had brought disgrace upon their house. He was to encourage this ne’er-do-weel, who at last showed some slight sense of his own worthlessness--to pat him on the back, and bid him go forward and win the bride whom he, Trent, had been refused. “I wish you would sound Sir Bernard,” said the innocent Duchess. Trent started. The suggestion chimed in so exactly with certain dark suggestions of his own secret mind that he nearly betrayed his exultation. “I will do so if you wish,” he said, measuring out his words carefully, so as to give his conscience no possible excuse thereafter for reproaching him with treachery to his brother. The Vanbrughs had not been in the house five minutes that night before the Duke saw more than anyone else had seen. Every look that passed across the table between Alistair and Hero told him that they had nothing more to tell each other. He saw also that the physician had as little suspicion of what had happened as if he had been a thousand miles off all the time. After dinner was over the lovers wandered down the garden paths and the Duchess retired to her drawing-room. The Duke and Vanbrugh were left sitting on the verandah over the coffee and cigars, of which only Trent partook. The physician dealt as severely with himself as with his patients, and the abstemious habits so long enforced by poverty had not been departed from in prosperity. The Home Secretary considered how he could make his attack most crushing. An ingenious idea suggested itself. “Do you think you have treated me quite fairly, Sir Bernard?” he asked in an accent of mild reproach. The physician turned and stared at him. “In what way do you mean, Duke?” “Am I not correct in saying that you declined me for a son-in-law principally on the ground that I had the misfortune to be the brother of Lord Alistair Stuart?” “That was one of my strongest reasons, certainly--perhaps the strongest. Well?” “Well!” The Duke waved his hand in the direction in which the lovers had disappeared. “I never said anything implying that I should object to make a friend of your brother,” protested Sir Bernard hastily, trying to ward off the unwelcome suggestion. The Minister treated this evasion with contempt. “My brother has been wiser than I, it appears. He has made sure of Miss Vanbrugh’s consent before asking for yours.” “I hope you are mistaken!” cried the father, now seriously alarmed. “I am sure you must be. I know every thought in my daughter’s mind.” “Is it possible that you, a wise man, can believe that?” “I am certain that she has never had a secret from me before.” “Then it is serious indeed.”