"I am very pleased you have consulted me in this way, Reggie, very much pleased indeed. It shows a very proper feeling on your part, and is a fresh proof of your unchanging affection for me, and of your confidence in my judgment. As I have told you, I have seen this coming on ever since Fay took that remarkable turn for the better, and I have tried to face it in the proper spirit." "And so you will," I exclaimed. "I have never known anything happen that you haven't faced in the proper spirit." Annabel looked pleased. "Of course, Reggie, I cannot deny that it is a bit of a shock to me--especially after all these years; but on the other hand papa always wished you to marry, and it does seem a pity for the title to die out. I try to look at the matter from all sides." "Yes, yes," I said impatiently, getting up from my seat and walking about the great hall, where we had been sitting in the firelight after tea. "But what we are discussing now is not whether I am justified in marrying at all, but whether I am justified in marrying Fay." Annabel shook her head. "That is what I am not sure about. I wish to look at the question dispassionately, but I very much doubt if you are." My heart fell fathoms deep; yet I felt how wise I had been to consult Annabel before speaking to Fay. Arthur, looking at the matter from the man's point of view, did not see the injustice of tying a young woman to an old man; but Annabel, looking at it from the woman's standpoint, evidently did. "She is so young," I said. "And so inexperienced," my sister added. "That is what I feel. She has seen no society of her own class, except Blathwayte and ourselves." "Exactly, Reggie, and nothing but good society teaches a girl _savoir faire_. Of course, even a girl as young as Fay who had seen more of the world would be different; but she came here straight out of the schoolroom." How well Annabel understood, I thought to myself, and how exactly she looked at the matter from my point of view! She really was a wonderful woman. "Then you think even at her age--if she had seen more of the world and had had more experience of life--I might have asked her to marry me without making a mistake which would spoil both our lives?" "I do indeed, Reggie. But as it is she is so very ignorant and unsophisticated." There was a pause, which I filled up by spoiling my right boot through poking the fire with it. Then Annabel said, apparently à propos of nothing: "Fay hasn't any money--at least, not any to speak of." How well my sister read my thoughts, I said to myself. It was Fay's lack of wealth--if she did not marry me--that weighed on my mind. Wildacre had left his children about eight hundred a year apiece, but that was not enough to keep my darling as she ought to be kept. Still I admit I was surprised that this should have occurred to Annabel. "But anyhow you have enough," she went on. "Papa left an adequate fortune to endow a baronetage."