"Of course I do! I can't make you understand, Lester! She doesn't speechify about these things--she never speechifies to me, at least. She mocks at her own side--just as much as ours. But it's her father she worships--and everything that he says and thinks. She adores him--she'd go to the stake for him any day. And if you want to be a friend of hers, lay a finger on him, and you'll see! Of course it's mad--I know that. But I'd rather marry her mad than any other woman sane!" "All the same you _could_ break it off," persisted Lester. "Of course I could. I could hang--or poison--or shoot myself, I suppose, if it comes to that. It would be much the same thing. If I do have to give her up, I shall cut the whole business--Parliament--estates--everything!" The quarter-decking began again; and Lester waited patiently on a slowly subsiding frenzy. At last he put a question. "What are your chances?" "With her? I don't know. She encourages me one day, and snubs me the next. But one thing I do know. If I attend that meeting, and make the sort of speech I should have made three months ago without turning a hair--and if I don't make it, mother will know the reason why!--it's all up with me." "Why don't you apply to Coryston?" "What--to give up the other meeting? He's very likely to climb down, isn't he?--with his damned revolutionary nonsense. He warned us all that he was coming down here to make mischief--and, by Jove, he's doing it!" "I say, who's taking my name in vain?" said a high-pitched voice. Lester turned to the doorway, and beheld a protruding head, with glittering greenish eyes, alive with laughter. Coryston slowly emerged, and closed the door behind him. "Arthur, my boy, what's up now?" Arthur paused, looked at him angrily, but was too sore and sulky to reply. Lester mildly summarized the situation. Coryston whistled. Then he deposited the butterfly-net and tin case he had been carrying, accepted a cigarette, and hoisting himself onto the corner of a heavy wooden pedestal which held the periwigged bust of an eighteenth-century Coryston, he flung an arm affectionately round the bust's neck, and sat cross-legged, smoking and pondering. "Bar the meeting for a bit," he said at last, addressing his brother; "we'll come back to it. But meeting or no meeting, I don't see any way out for you, Arthur--upon my soul, I don't!" "No one ever supposed you would!" cried Arthur. "Here's your dilemma," pursued Coryston, good-humoredly. "If you engage yourself to her, mother will cut off the supplies. And if mother cuts off the supplies, Miss Glenwilliam won't have you." "You think everybody but yourself, Corry, mercenary pigs!" "What do _you_ think? Do you see Miss Glenwilliam pursuing love in a garret--a genteel garret--on a thousand a year? For her father, perhaps!--but for nobody else! Her clothes alone would cost a third of it."