Drumpipes nodded approving comprehension, while he pondered the project thus outlined. “I’m not sure I don’t like the scheme,” he repeated. “It’s risky, though. She’s fearfully keen of scent, that girl is. If you didn’t play it for all you were worth, every minute, she’d twig the thing like a shot. You’d leave her with me a good deal, wouldn’t you, and devote yourself to the old man? That would be the safest, you know.” “That would hardly do. It wouldn’t be in character. When an Earl is giving a party, and there is a beautiful young woman about, he doesn’t go and talk with windy old fossils in frock-coats. It would look unnatural. It might as like as not excite suspicion. And now you’d better clear out. I want to go to bed.” The Earl rose, stood irresolute for a moment, and then put a hand on Mosscrop’s shoulder. “Davie,” he said gravely, “there’s one thing you must remember. You’re not a good man to handle money--if I didn’t know your forbears, I’d never credit your being a Scot at all--remember, laddie, that those lawyers have run up terrible bills against me, and farm values have all dropped in the most fearful fashion, and I’ve not kept so tight a hand on the purse-strings of late, myself, as usual, and so do this thing as moderately----” “Oh, you be damned!” laughed Mosscrop, and pushed him from the room. When he was alone, the notion of going to bed seemed to have lost its urgency. He lighted his pipe, and sat down to read Vesta-lia’s letter once again. CHAPTER X. At breakfast, three mornings later, Mr. Laban Skinner and his daughter dallied over their plates, and sent the waiter out again with some asperity when he, taking it for granted they must have finished the meal, came in to clear the table. Each had been reading a letter, from the early morning mail. “It is an invitation from the Earl of Drumpipes,” remarked the father, regarding his daughter over his _pince-nez_, “expressing, in what I am constrained to describe as somewhat abrupt and common-place terms, his desire that we should consider ourselves as his guests during the entire day upon the approaching 24th instant, the occasion being the anniversary of his birth.” He handed over the note for her inspection as he spoke. “The impression which his phraseology produces upon me,” he added, “is that of one performing a perfunctory act of courtesy to foreigners of his acquaintance, to whom he extends the ceremonial proffer of a hospitality which he assumes will be declined.” “Oh, not at all, papa,” commented Adele, briefly glancing at the note. “All noblemen write in that formal way. It is a part of their bringing-up. No; he wants us to come, right enough. I have a letter here from Mr. Linkhaw, explaining the thing. Of course it was a suggestion of his.”