'He proposed to three sisters in one night--all the daughters of a commandant of one of those confounded brigade depots, and hearing that the adjutant might be sent for his sword, Dick was off like a bird by an early train for London. But we all know that Dick has an engagement-ring with a blue stone, which he gives to some girl everywhere, yet contrives to get back in a lover's quarrel when the route comes.' To Fotheringhame it was apparent that his friend had come back to Dumbarton in a somewhat taciturn mood--cloudy in face and abstracted in manner. 'What the dickens has happened?' thought he. 'Was our colonel--the old general--kind?' he asked. 'Very,' was the curt reply. 'And the ladies--kinder still, I suppose?' hazarded Fotheringhame, lying back in his chair and shooting concentric rings of tobacco-smoke upward. 'No answer--eh? Now, apropos of the subject of your remarkable letter, I hope that you have left Eaglescraig without committing yourself?' 'I played no more with that fellow Hew.' 'I am not thinking of Hew.' 'Committing myself--how?' 'By a proposal.' 'What had I to offer a girl so rich as Mary Montgomerie--an heiress, in fact?' 'All that a girl wants in a husband, I suppose--a deuced good-looking and presentable fellow of his inches.' 'I could never sink to be a dependent on my wife, Leslie. Had Mary been penniless----' 'Oh, come--we have got the length of calling her Mary, have we?' 'Had she been so, I might not have shrunk from asking her to share my poverty--for such it is; but her fortune is an impassable barrier between us--and I would to heaven that I had never set foot in Eaglescraig!' 'This is rather Quixotic,' said Fotheringhame, sipping his brandy and water, and humming-- '"'Tis madness to remember--'twere better to forget."' 'Moreover, if she marries without her guardian's consent, "then in that case," as the will has it, her money passes from her.' 'You seem to have had all the details through hand,' said Fotheringhame, drily. 'Not with her, at all events.' 'And she is attractive?' 'Attractive is not the word--she is downright lovely, and good as she is lovely! But her guardian, the general, has decided on plans for her future.' 'A peerage.' 'Not at all. He resolves that she shall marry the cub called Hew Montgomerie, who is the heir of entail--a kind of distant cousin.' 'Does--Mary affect him?' asked Fotheringhame, with a quizzical smile. 'Not at all! But I cannot tell you how much she has bewitched me.' 'Aware all the while of the plan in store for her.' 'I know what a sceptic you are about women, Leslie; but her face is ever before me, by day and night. I can see it now looking at me, out of that blank barrack wall, as plainly as I see yours. She has indeed bewitched me!' Fotheringhame looked at the wall indicated, shrugged his shoulders, and said, with a provoking laugh: