Taken back by this frank response, Blair stammered: “Well, I guess that explains everything. It’s not surprising that you should feel as you do. If you are jealous, I can forgive it a little bit, but it is low down to call a woman a fortune hunter.” Now Gordon Galorey’s face changed and grew slightly white. “Don’t make me angry, my dear chap,” he said in a low tone; “I have said what I wanted to say. Now, go to the devil if you like and as soon as you like.” And the boy said hotly, stammering in his excitement: “Not yet—not yet—not before I tell you what I think.” Gordon, with wonderful control of his own anger, met the boy’s eyes, and said with great patience: “No, don’t, Dan; don’t go on. There are many things in this affair that we can’t touch upon. Let it drop. The right woman would make a ripping man of you, but you oughtn’t to marry for ten years.” Dan took the hand which Galorey put out to him, and the Englishman said warmly: “My dear chap, I hope it will all come out right, from my heart.” Dan, who had regained his balance, said to his friend: “I’ve been very angry at what you said, but you’re the chap my father sent me to. There must be something back of this, and I’m going to find out what it is, and I’m going to take my own way to find out. I wouldn’t give a rap for anything that came to me through a trick or a lie, and I wouldn’t know how to go to her with a cock-and-bull story. I shall act as I feel and go ahead being just as I am, and perhaps she won’t want me after all, even if I have got the rocks!” And Galorey said heartily: “I wish there was a chance of it.” When, later, Gordon thought of Dan it was with a glow. “What a chip of the old block he is,” he said; “what a good bit of character, even at twenty-two years.” He was divided between feeling that he had made a mess of things between Dan and himself, and feeling sure that some of his advice had gone home. After a moment’s silence, Dan Blair’s son said: “I’m going up to London to-morrow.” “For long?” “Don’t know.” Then returning with boyish simplicity to their subject, which Galorey thought had been dropped, Dan said: “There may be something true in what you say, Gordon. Perhaps she does want my money. I’m not a titled man and I’ll never be known for anything except my income. At any rate I was rich when I asked her to marry me, and I’m going to fix up that old place of hers, and I’m glad I’ve got the coin to do it.” When, later, for they had been interrupted in their conversation by the entrance of the lady herself, Gordon, as Ruggles had done, mentally thought of the flowing tide of life, and how it flowed over what he himself had called “rotten ground.” Perhaps old Blair was right, he mused, after all. What does it matter if the source is pure at the head water? It’s awfully hard to force it at the start, at least. CHAPTER XVI—THE MUSICALE PROGRAM