"Well then--don't thank me at all--that's far the best course for both of us," said the Doctor, cheerfully. "I'll say this, too--the girl has no other attachment I know of, and I'll be glad to give her to you, should she be agreeable. But a word on other matters." He grew serious now. "I am not a young man, Mr. Beard, and somewhat loath to part with my one chick for the few years left me. So I must ask you this--should you marry my daughter, sir, would you intend to remain in the Floridas or return to New York?" Andrew felt himself unable to think of such petty matters. "I have grown much attached to the Floridas," he said, smiling. "So much that I should not think of quitting them, if--" "Good," said the Doctor. "Then we're agreed. I confess--I'd feel a wrench were it to be otherwise. Well, sir--I think that is all I wished to say. The settlements--of course I speak merely in the eventuality, Mr. Beard--had best be discussed between your father and myself--I might even make the voyage North in case--though in these uneasy times--" "My father is much interested in the Floridas," Andrew blurted out. "It is even possible my father might remove some of his interests here--" He half-regretted the words once they were spoken, but Dr. Gentian had behaved with such admirable candor that it surely behooved him to do likewise. "Indeed?" said the Doctor quietly. "That is very interesting." He reflected. "Your father is a wise man," he said. "No one knows what this stir in the North may lead to--but the Floridas will stand by the Crown. And should your father--well, well," he broke off. "There'll be time enough to talk of that later. At present, no doubt you're already busy with a sonnet to my daughter's eyebrow and aching for the sight of her. Ah, youth--what a heat in the mind it is, and how we cool when it's over. By the way," he went on more practically, "as you know, I must visit St. Augustine in a month or so, and be gone some time. If this matter we have discussed might be settled before I leave--" "But sir--I--I--Miss Gentian--" said Andrew, his mind topsy-turvy. Dr. Gentian laid a paternal hand on his shoulder. "There, lad--I don't mean to press you--or you her--but take my word for it, the swiftest love is often the surest and lastingest--and your bold, rapid lover is wedded and bedded and got his child on the maid while Sir Timothy Shilly-Shally is still sighing outside her door." Andrew felt this last advice a trifle frank in tone--but it was an unsqueamish age, and he could hardly quibble with so amiable a prospective father-in-law over niceties of language. He went out of the study, with the other's hand on his shoulder and a bronze call, like the call of a centaur's hunting-horn, in his heart. 2.