"I fail to...." began Colonel Wyvern. And then his eye fell on the slip of paper, and pomposity slipped from him like breath off a razor blade. "What--what----?" he said. "Moral and intellectual damages," said John. "My uncle feels he owes it to you." Silence fell upon the room. The Colonel had picked up the cheque and was scrutinizing it as if he had been a naturalist and it some rare specimen encountered in the course of his walks abroad. His eyebrows, disentangling themselves and moving apart, rose in an astonishment he made no attempt to conceal. He looked from the cheque to Mr. Carmody and back again. "Good God!" said Colonel Wyvern. With a sudden movement he tore the paper in two, burst into a crackling laugh and held his hand out. "Good God!" he cried jovially. "Do you think I want money? All I ever wanted was for you to admit you were an old scoundrel and murderer, and you've done it. And if you knew how lonely it's been in this infernal place with no one to speak to or smoke a cigar with...." Mr. Carmody had risen, in his eyes the look of one who sees visions and beholds miracles. He gazed at his old friend in awe. Long as he had known him, it was only now that he realized his true nobility of soul. "Wyvern!" "Carmody," said Colonel Wyvern, "how are the pike?" "The pike?" Mr. Carmody blinked, still dazed. "Pike?" "In the moat. Have you caught the big one yet?" "Not yet." "I'll come up and try for him this afternoon, shall I?" "Yes." "He says 'Yes'," said John, interpreting. "And only just now," said Colonel Wyvern, "I was savaging my daughter because she wanted to marry into your family!" "What's that?" cried Mr. Carmody, and John clutched the edge of the table. His heart had given a sudden, ecstatic leap, and for an instant the room had seemed to rock about him. "Yes," said Colonel Wyvern. He broke into another of his laughs, and John could not help wondering where Pat had got that heavenly tinkle of silver bells which served her on occasion when she was amused. Not from her father's side of the family. "Bless my soul!" said Mr. Carmody. "Yes," said Colonel Wyvern. "She came to me just before you arrived and told me that she wanted to marry your nephew Hugo." CHAPTER XV I Some years before, in pursuance of his duties as a member of the English Rugby Football fifteen, it had become necessary for John one rainy afternoon in Dublin to fall on the ball at a moment when five or six muscular Irish forwards full of Celtic enthusiasm were endeavouring to kick it. Until this moment he had always ranked that as the most unpleasant and disintegrating experience of his life. His fingers tightened their clutch on the table. He found its support grateful. He blinked, once very quickly as if he had just received a blow in the face, and then a second time more slowly. "Hugo?" he said.