“Is it true, the great news I hear—that you’re to be married?” “Ah you have heard it then?” “Didn’t the General tell you?” Paul asked. The Master’s face was wonderful. “Tell me what?” “That he mentioned it to me this afternoon?” “My dear fellow, I don’t remember. We’ve been in the midst of people. I’m sorry, in that case, that I lose the pleasure, myself, of announcing to you a fact that touches me so nearly. It _is_ a fact, strange as it may appear. It has only just become one. Isn’t it ridiculous?” St. George made this speech without confusion, but on the other hand, so far as our friend could judge, without latent impudence. It struck his interlocutor that, to talk so comfortably and coolly, he must simply have forgotten what had passed between them. His next words, however, showed he hadn’t, and they produced, as an appeal to Paul’s own memory, an effect which would have been ludicrous if it hadn’t been cruel. “Do you recall the talk we had at my house that night, into which Miss Fancourt’s name entered? I’ve often thought of it since.” “Yes; no wonder you said what you did”—Paul was careful to meet his eyes. “In the light of the present occasion? Ah but there was no light then. How could I have foreseen this hour?” “Didn’t you think it probable?” “Upon my honour, no,” said Henry St. George. “Certainly I owe you that assurance. Think how my situation has changed.” “I see—I see,” our young man murmured. His companion went on as if, now that the subject had been broached, he was, as a person of imagination and tact, quite ready to give every satisfaction—being both by his genius and his method so able to enter into everything another might feel. “But it’s not only that; for honestly, at my age, I never dreamed—a widower with big boys and with so little else! It has turned out differently from anything one could have dreamed, and I’m fortunate beyond all measure. She has been so free, and yet she consents. Better than any one else perhaps—for I remember how you liked her before you went away, and how she liked you—you can intelligently congratulate me.” “She has been so free!” Those words made a great impression on Paul Overt, and he almost writhed under that irony in them as to which it so little mattered whether it was designed or casual. Of course she had been free, and appreciably perhaps by his own act; for wasn’t the Master’s allusion to her having liked him a part of the irony too? “I thought that by your theory you disapproved of a writer’s marrying.” “Surely—surely. But you don’t call me a writer?” “You ought to be ashamed,” said Paul. “Ashamed of marrying again?” “I won’t say that—but ashamed of your reasons.” The elder man beautifully smiled. “You must let me judge of them, my good friend.” “Yes; why not? For you judged wonderfully of mine.”