Deleah receiving his communication in uncomfortable silence, he went on: "For several reasons--some of them business ones--it has been arranged for my brother to leave Brockenham for a year. To travel!" Pausing there, she still finding nothing to say, he added, looking closer at the paper on the desk, "He will not go." "I am sorry," Deleah shyly said. "He won't go, because of you." Then he turned his face to her, and Deleah saw that his face expressed cold disapproval. "I am quite sure you do not wish to stand in Reginald's light, Miss Day?" "Oh no." "I was sure of it. And therefore I was encouraged to send for you. It will be better that we talk matters over a little. You have influence over Reggie?" "I think not." Once or twice she had tried to impose her own ideas of what was right and fitting upon the young man, and had failed. Why should she pretend to any influence? "But of course you have. I want to ask you to be unselfish enough to exert it for my brother's good." "I would do that gladly if I could." "Then, send him away. It will be doing him an inestimable benefit." "I can tell him it would be better for him to go; but he is not easily made to do a thing he does not like. "He tells me--without any engagement on your part--he considers himself bound to you." She shook her head quickly, her face rose-red: "Oh no!" "He is always being engaged to--somebody: poor Reggie!" "Is he?" she asked innocently. "Reginald is my brother," he went on, and he turned his gaze from her face and looked at the finger-nails of his left hand with an absorbed attention. "He is, however, so much younger than myself that he has almost been like my son. You will give me credit, I am sure, for not wishing to disparage Reginald, when I tell you that this is not by any means the first time Reginald has thought of marriage." He paused, and smiled awry to himself as he contemplated the finger-nails. "Or, rather, I should put it, not the first time he has talked to young ladies of being engaged to them." Deleah sat silent, determined not to speak till speech was absolutely demanded of her. "It has not cost my brother much to change his mind," Sir Francis said, and dropped his hand and looked at the pretty girl sitting before him. "Since he has to do it so often, that is well," Deleah said. "It is well, in a way," Sir Francis agreed. "But supposing that he took an irretrievable step, and then changed his mind?" "That would be more serious," Deleah admitted. "You understand what I mean, Miss Day?" "Perfectly. You mean, supposing he married me and then repented, not having been given time to repent beforehand. Having been taken at his word as soon as he spoke--and snatched up." "That is putting the case more strongly than I had thought of doing; but--" "But it is what you mean?" "You are not offended, I hope?" "No; because I quite understand. It would be surprising if you did not feel as you do about it."