"But I couldn't do with it from them," said Raffles, with quite a bitter little laugh. "Teddy wasn't there, of course; he's up north for that rotten match the team play nowadays against Liverpool. But the game's fizzling, he'll be home to-morrow, and I simply can't face him and his Camilla. He'll be a married man before we see him again," added Raffles, getting hold of his evening paper once more. "Is that to come off so soon?" "The sooner the better," said Raffles, strangely. "You're not quite happy about it," said I, with execrable tact, I know, and yet deliberately, because his view of this marriage had always puzzled me. "I'm happy as long as they are," responded Raffles, not without a laugh at his own meritorious sentiment. "I only wish," he sighed, "that they were both absolutely worthy of each other!" "And you don't think they are?" "No, I don't." "You think such a lot of young Garland?" "I'm very fond of him, Bunny." "But you see his faults?" "I've always seen them; they're not full-fathom-five like mine!" "Yet you think she's not good enough for him?" "Not good enough--she?" and he stopped himself at that. But his voice was enough for me; the unspoken antithesis was stronger than words could have made it. Scales fell from my eyes. "Where on earth did you get that idea?" "I thought it was yours, A.J." "But why?" "You seemed to disapprove of the engagement from the first." "So I did, after what poor Teddy had been up to in his extremity! I may as well be honest about that now. It was all right in a pal of ours, Bunny, but all wrong in the man who dreamt of marrying Camilla Belsize." "Yet you have just been moving heaven and hell to make it possible for them to marry after all!" Raffles made another attempt upon his paper. I marvel now that he let me catechise him as I was doing. But the truth had just dawned upon me, and I simply had to see it whole as the risen sun, whereas Raffles seemed under no such passionate necessity to keep it to himself. "Teddy's all right," said he, inconsistently. "He'll never try anything of the kind again; he's had a lesson for life. Besides, I don't often take my hand from the plough, as you ought to know. Bunny. It was I who brought those two together. But it was none of my mundane business to put them asunder again." "It was you who brought them together?" I repeated insidiously. "More or less, Bunny. It was at some cricket week, if it wasn't two weeks running; they were pals already, but she and I were greater pals before the first week was over." "And yet you didn't cut him out!" "My dear Bunny, I should hope not." "But you might have done, A.J.; don't tell me you couldn't if you'd tried." Raffles played with his paper without replying. He was no coxcomb. But neither would he ape an alien humility.