"Oh yes," he admitted, indifferently. "Known them all my life. Father represented Meek & Brokenshire in England till my grandfather died. Goldborough used to be an impecunious chap, land poor, till he and father began to pull together. Father's been able to give him tips on the market, and he's given father-- Well, dad's always had a taste for English swells. Never could stand the Continental kind--gilt gingerbread he's called 'em--and so, well, you can see." I admitted that I could see, going on to ask what the Goldborough family consisted of. There was Lord Leatherhead, the eldest son; then there were two younger sons, one in the army and one preparing for the Church; and there were three girls. "Any of the daughters married?" I ventured, timidly. There was nothing forced in the indifference with which he made his explanations. Laura was married to a banker named Bell; Janet, he thought he had heard, was engaged to a chap in the Inverness Rangers; Cecilia--Cissie they usually called her--was to the best of his knowledge still wholly free, but the best of his knowledge did not go far. I pumped up my courage again. "Is she--nice?" "Oh, nice enough." He really didn't know much about her. She was generally away at school when he had been at Goldborough Castle. When she was there he hadn't seen more than a long-legged, gawky girl, rather good at tennis, with red hair hanging down her back. Satisfied with these replies, I went on to tell him of my interview with his father an hour or two before. Of this he seized on one point with some ecstasy. "So you told him you'd take me! Oh, Alix--gosh!" The exclamation was a sigh of relief as well as of rapture. I could smile at it because it was so boyish and American, especially as he clasped me again and held me in a way that almost stopped my breath. When I freed myself, however, I said, with a show of firmness: "Yes, Hugh; it's what I said to him; but it's not what I'm going to repeat to you." "Not what you're going to repeat to me? But if you said it to him--" "I'm still not obliged to accept you--to-day." "But if you mean to accept me at all--" "Yes, I mean to accept you--if all goes well." "But what do you mean by that?" "I mean--if your family should want me." I could feel his clasp relax as he said: "Oh, if you're going to wait for that!" "Hugh, darling, how can I not wait for it? I told him I couldn't stop to consider a family; but--but I see I must." "Oh, but why? We shall lose everything if you do that. To wait for my family to want you to marry me--" I detached myself altogether from his embrace, pretending to arrange my skirts about my feet. He leaned forward, his fingers interlocked, his elbows on his knees, his kind young face disconsolate.