“That is what I hoped you would say,” Sir Bernard answered gravely. “I want to discuss the matter with you from that point of view.” Alistair lowered his head again. “I am not good enough for her--you need not tell me that. But if she loves me?” He spoke in low tones, which only just reached the father’s ears. “You must let me speak plainly, Lord Alistair, as plainly as I spoke to your brother when he came to me with the same request.” “Trent! Did he come to you on my behalf?” cried Alistair in astonishment. “He came on his own. He has known Hero longer than you have.” It took Alistair a moment or two to grasp the situation. “Did you refuse Trent?” he exclaimed. “Yes.” In his own mind Vanbrugh was beginning to doubt the wisdom of that refusal. Had he not been over cautious? His objection to the Duke of Trent had been more or less hypothetical: the Duke himself was sound; it was possible that he might not transmit the family taint. He might have done well to consider the danger of leaving his daughter to follow her own fancy. When there were so few perfect husbands, and so many undesirables, it would have been wiser, perhaps, to close with one who had so much in his favour. “Why, in the name of Heaven, did you object to him?” “Partly because he was your brother. I told him I could not let my daughter marry a man of diseased stock.” The words stunned Alistair. He had been prepared to have his own misdeeds brought up against him; to be told, perhaps, that it was too late for him to reform; or at least that he must give proofs that the reformation was thorough and lasting, before he could be trusted with Hero. But this was cutting away the very foundations. “I never heard of such a thing!” he stammered, letting the cards fall from his fingers. “Do you condemn us for the sins of our ancestors?” “It is not I who condemn you. Nature does that, and I am only her student and interpreter.” Alistair put his hand to his head. “And is that the latest gospel of science?” he said bitterly. “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” “It is not a very recent gospel, and you are not quoting from a scientific work,” Sir Bernard reminded him. “All that science does is to add the corollary that those who have eaten sour grapes ought not to become fathers.” Alistair made no answer for a time. He sat toying with the cards, cutting them at random and speculating vaguely as to who were the Argine and the Hogier after whom certain picture cards were named. It struck him that men were like cards; the gods must have created them of different values for their own amusement, and be playing some Olympian game among themselves, in the chances of which it was his, Alistair’s, destiny to fall a loser of the trick. Sir Bernard watched him with a pity he did not try to quench. He liked this young man very much--so much that he could have wished for his sake that Nature was less inexorable.