“We have seen a great deal lately of Lord Alistair,” the father began gravely, “and I am afraid I have been to blame in not noticing how much you and he were together. I will not ask you whether you have seen his evident admiration for you, but I hope it is not too late to caution you against any serious inclination for him.” “Who has been speaking to you about us?” demanded Hero, with a bright spot on her cheeks. Sir Bernard had not allowed for womanly intuition when he promised to keep the Duke’s interference a secret. He shook his head gravely as he answered: “I see no good in discussing that. It is for you to tell me how matters stand.” “It was the Duke, of course,” Hero returned. “Paragons are always mean. There was a time when I might have accepted him if he had asked me to. But he is like the dog in the manger: he would not ask me himself, and yet he grudges me to his brother.” The scientist was weak enough to accept the gambit offered by his adversary. “You are doing the Duke an injustice,” he said. “As a matter of fact he called on me some time ago in London, and asked me for your hand.” Hero opened her eyes. It was a shock, and it could not be a disagreeable one, to know that she had had such a suitor. In the light of this revelation the tale-bearer was less harshly judged. “What did you say to him? Why didn’t you tell me?” she exclaimed. “I declined his proposal on medical grounds,” her father answered. “The family stock is unsound.” Hero began to see what she had to face, and her heart sank. “I think you might have told me,” she said reproachfully. “He came to ask my consent, not yours, and I told him I would not give it. There was no reason that I could see for telling you.” Hero looked her father in the face. “Suppose he had come to me first, and I had accepted him?” she said. The physician answered gravely: “I should have had to ask you to choose between him and me.” The clash of these two strong wills had come at last, and both were silent for a time. Vanbrugh was the first to resume. “Every objection I had against the Duke of Trent, of course, applies with ten-fold force to his brother. The Duke is physically sound; he has personally escaped the taint of his family stock, and it is possible that it may disappear in his descendants. But Lord Alistair has inherited his father’s vices. He is an idler, a profligate, and I might say a drunkard.” “He has ceased to drink,” Hero protested. “I do not believe the life he has been leading is his natural one. I am sure that if he were to marry a woman who understood him he would become a changed man.” “I do not believe in changed men,” her father answered. “But that is not the point. I am not condemning Lord Alistair for the life he has led up to the present. On the contrary, from my point of view of an enlightened sociology, the sooner such a man exhausts his vital energy the better.” “You would have him commit suicide!” Hero exclaimed, with flashing eyes.