“Well, don’t interrupt,” proceeded Tom imperturbably. “We’ve got it all beautifully arranged. I’m going to take part of the regular practice, as Raymond has always been bothering me to do ever since it increased so much, and we’re to have half the house for our establishment, and he and Aunt Elizabeth the other. It was originally two houses, and lends itself excellently to that arrangement, though I dare say practically we shall be all one household, as you and our aunt have managed to hit it off so well. Monica, can’t Beatrice be married from Trevlyn when Haddon is well enough to give her away? It would save a lot of bother. I hate flummery, and I’m sure she does too. Come now, Beatrice, don’t laugh. Don’t you think that would be an excellent arrangement? Here we are; what is the good of getting all split up again? You’ll be losing your heart to another marquis if I let you out of my sight.” Her eyes were dancing with mischievous merriment. She was more than ready to enter the lists. “Just listen to the tyrant—trying to keep me a prisoner already! trying to take everything into his own hands—and not content without adding insult to injury!” His eyes too were alight; but his mouth was grim. “I have not forgotten how you served me last time, my lady.” “At Oxford?” “At Oxford.” “Monica, listen. I will tell you how I served him. I had eyes for no one but him, silly girl that I was; I was with him morning, noon and night. Child as I was at the time, careless and inexperienced, even _I_ was absolutely ashamed at the open preference I showed him; I blush even now to think of the undisguised way in which I flung myself at a particularly hard head. And yet he pretends he did not understand! If that is so, then for real, downright, hopeless stupidity and obtuseness, commend me to an Oxford double-first-class-man!” Beatrice might get the best of it in an encounter of tongues, but Tom had his own way in the settlement of their affairs, possibly because her resistance was but a pretence. What, indeed, had they to wait for, when they had been waiting so many long years for one another? Nothing clouded the horizon of their happiness. Even the hideous shadow which had been in a sense the means of bringing them together seemed to have vanished with the sudden disappearance of Conrad Fitzgerald from the neighbourhood. Upon the very day following Tom’s visit to him, he left his house, ill and weak as he was, to join his sister at Mentone. His servant accompanied him. The desolate house was shut up once more, and Tom Pendrill sincerely hoped that the haunting baleful influence of that wild and wicked nature had passed from their lives for ever.