"Can't drive a motor, I suppose! Can't fly--I don't think." "As to breaking your neck," said James, "there's still a chance for you." "I shall make a mess of it," Urquhart retorted. "Is this going to be a neck-breaking expedition?" That was from Lingen, who now had an object in life. "I never said so," Urquhart told him. "I said heart-breaking--a far simpler affair." "What is going to break your heart in it, please?" Lucy asked him. She saw that there lay something behind his rattle. "Well," said Urquhart, brazening it out, "it would break mine to get over the snow-field--some eight miles of it, there are--and to find that I couldn't get down. That might easily happen." "And what would you do?" James fixed her with his eyeglass. "That's where the neck-breaking might intervene," he said. "Jimmy would rather risk his neck any day." "Than his heart!" "Heart!" said Vera. "No such thing. Quite another organ. It's a case of dinner. He'd risk his neck for a dinner, and so would any man." "I believe you are right," said James. Lucy with very bright eyes looked from one to the other of her lovers. Each wore a mask. She determined to ask James to give up the Folgefond, discerning trouble in the air. They went home by water, and Lancelot added his unconscious testimony. He was between Urquhart's knees, his hand upon the tiller, his mood confidential. "I say--" he began, and Urquhart encouraged him to say on. --"It's slightly important, but I suppose I couldn't do the Folgefond by any chance?" "You are saying a good deal," said Urquhart. "I'll put it like this, that by some chance you might, but by no chance in the world could Patrick." "Hoo!" said Lancelot, "and why not, pray?" "His mother would put her foot on it. Splosh! it would go like a cockroach." "I know," said dreamy Lancelot. "That's what would happen to me, I expect." Then he added, "That's what will happen to my father." "Good cockroach," said Urquhart, looking ahead of him. "You think she won't want him to go." Lancelot snorted. "_Won't_ want him! Why, she doesn't already. And he'll do what she wants, I'll bet you." "Does he always?" "He always does now. It's the air, I fancy." CHAPTER XXI THE DEPARTURE But pout as she might, she could not prevail with James, whose vanity had been scratched. "My dear girl, I'd sooner perish," he said. "Give up a jolly walk because Jimmy Urquhart talks about my heart and his own neck--preposterous! Besides, there's nothing in it." "But, James," she said, "if I ask you--" He kissed the back of her neck. She was before the glass, busy with her hair. "You don't ask me. You wouldn't ask me. No woman wants to make a fool of a man. If she does, she's a vampire." "Mr. Urquhart is very impulsive," she dared to say.