"Possibly, sir," he interrupted, "but I want to do it. You see, sir," he warmed with his subject, "I'll be dashed if I've troubled you much in the last ten years--now have I? You've made me an allowance on which I couldn't live in a gentlemanly way at home. So I've exchanged again and again for foreign service, going down and down till I've landed in the West Indies. And now I have this chance of getting back to my old regiment, to a soldier's life that is worth having----" "No soldier's life is worth having. If you will be kind enough to remember, I objected from the first to the army," interrupted the old man, with icy politeness. Marmaduke groaned aloud. "Oh, don't let us go back so far as that, sir. The thing's done, and practically you have to decide now whether you're going to wreck my fortune or make it." Lord Drummuir took out his pocket-handkerchief solemnly. "And this is what I am asked to do, when my physicians insist on absolute rest of body and mind. I am asked to consider, to take all the responsibility. No, Marmaduke, you are old enough to decide for yourself!" "Then you wish me to go back to that miserable hole?" began the young man vehemently. "I am informed on the best authority that the climate of the West Indies has sensibly improved of late years," remarked his lordship, imperturbably. "The discovery of the cinchona plant----" "Damn the cinchona plant!" burst out Marmaduke. But at that instant a silvery artificial little laugh rose behind them and Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand appeared tripping over the grass with the daintiest of sandalled feet. She had again been watching father and son from her window, and after a week's hesitation she had suddenly decided that something must be done to stop what seemed to be growing confidence. She had hitherto played with the plan of arousing the old man's jealousy, confining herself to half-hearted flirtations with Marmaduke, who, also on the watch, had fallen in with the amusement quite pleasantly. But that morning Colonel Compton had spoken out his fears. "You'll have to look to your p's and q's, Fan, or that youngster will be running away with some of the peer's loose cash. And as the estate is strictly entailed that won't suit us. I overheard that weasel, Jack Jardine, talking to the captain about the purchase of his majority, so you had better look sharp." The words echoed in her brain as she had stood watching father and son in an apparently amicable conversation which clinched her decision. The result being her appearance before the two conspirators, provocative to the very tilt of her carefully held pink parasol. "Oh, pardon," she began, in the stage French accent she affected in society, "but I mean not to disturb! Only the filial picture of milor and his too charming son was irresistible to poor me--so _sans famille_."