"Fate, too," I lamented, in a tragic voice, "appears to have entered into this nefarious conspiracy. Here, not two miles away, is one of the greatest heiresses in America,--clever, I am told, beautiful, I am sure, for I have yet to discover a woman who sees anything in the least attractive about her,--and, above all, with the Woods millions at her disposal. Why, Peter, Margaret Hugonin is the woman I have been looking for these last three years. She is, to a hair, the sort of woman I have always intended to make unhappy. And I can't even get a sight of her! Here are you, laid up with the gout, and unable to help me; and yonder is the heiress, making a foolish pretence at mourning for the old curmudgeon who left her all that money, and declining to meet people. Oh, but she is a shiftless woman, Peter! At this very moment she might be getting better acquainted with me; at this very moment, Peter, I might be explaining to her in what points she is utterly and entirely different from all the other women I have ever known. And she prefers to immure herself in Selwoode, with no better company than her father, that ungodly old retired colonel, and a she-cousin, somewhere on the undiscussable side of forty--when she might be engaging me in amorous dalliance! That Miss Hugonin is a shiftless woman, I tell you! And Fate--oh, but Fate, too, is a vixenish jade!" I cried, and shook my fist under the nose of an imaginary Lachesis. "You appear," said Peter, drily, "to be unusually well-informed as to what is going on at Selwoode." "You flatter me," I answered, as with proper modesty. "You must remember that there are maids at Selwoode. You must remember that my man Byam, is--and will be until that inevitable day when he will attempt to blackmail me, and I shall kill him in the most lingering fashion I can think of,--that Byam is, I say, something of a diplomatist." Mr. Blagden regarded me with disapproval. "So you've been sending your nigger cousin over to Selwoode to spy for you! You're a damn cad, you know, Bob," he pensively observed. "Now most people think that when you carry on like a lunatic you're simply acting on impulse. I don't. I believe you plan it out a week ahead. I sometimes think you are the most adroit and unblushing looker-out for number one I ever knew; and I can't for the life of me understand why I don't turn you out of doors."