"Why don't you go, George?" said Lady Heriot cheerfully. "You'd much better go by Mrs. Van Buren's boat than any other; and you've been talking of making a trip to America 'next year' ever since I've known you!" This amiable fiction was succeeded by fresh protestations from Mrs. Van Buren that no arrangement could be more charming, and Heriot, half against his will, half with pleasure, found himself agreeing to telegraph in the morning to inquire if he could obtain a berth. He hardly knew whether he was sorry or glad when he had done so. That the step would result in an engagement might be predicted with a tolerable degree of certainty, and he would have preferred to arrive at an understanding with himself under conditions which savoured less of coercion. Since a state-room proved to be vacant, however, he could do no less now than engage it; and everybody appeared so much pleased, and Miss Pierways was so very gracious, that the misgivings that disturbed him looked momentarily more unreasonable than ever. The night before he sailed, in their customary chat over whisky and cigars, Sir Francis said to him: "'Ask, and it shall be given unto you'!" "I'm inclined to think you're right," said his brother. "I suppose it will end in it.... She's a trifle like a well-bred machine--doesn't it strike you so?--warranted never to get out of order!" The other's look was significant, and Heriot added, "Very desirable in a wife, of course! Only somehow----" "'Only somehow' you're eccentric, George--you always were!" "It's not my reputation," said Heriot drily; "I believe that I'm considered particularly practical." "Reputations," retorted the Baronet, attempting an epigram, as he sometimes did in the course of his second whisky-and-potash, and failing signally in the endeavour, "are like tombstones--generally false." He realised the reality of tombstones, and became controversial. "_I've_ known you from a boy, and I say you were always eccentric. It was nothing but your eccentricity that you had to thank before. Here's a nice girl, a girl who will certainly have a good settlement, a girl who's undeniably handsome, ready to say 'yes' at the asking, and you grumble--I'm hanged if you don't grumble!--because you see she is to be depended on. What the devil do you want?" "I want to be fond of her," answered Heriot. "I admit all you've said of her; I want to like her more." "So you ought to; but what does it matter if you don't? All women are alike to the men who've married them after a year or two. She'll make an admirable mother, and that's the main thing, I suppose?" Was it?