“I have given you my opinion and my advice,” said Hurstmanceaux stiffly. “You can live at Black Hazel tolerably well, and in a way becoming your position; the air is very fine and the children will thrive admirably. But if you persist in continuing your present rate of expenditure----” His sister opened the door and disappeared, calling the Blenheims with her. “Lord, excuse me, Ronnie, but why do you talk that rot?” said her husband, peering up through his glasses at his brother-in-law. “What on earth is the use of going on in that way to her? Out o’ London? Down in the west of Ireland? Your sister and me? Oh, Lord!” The idea of his exile from “life” so tickled his fancy that he laughed till he choked himself. “Black Hazel! Mouse and I and her chicks at Black Hazel! Oh, good Lord, Ronnie! You won’t beat that if you try for a week o’ Sundays!” He chuckled feebly but merrily. “What is there to laugh at?” said Hurstmanceaux. “Is the Bankruptcy Court more agreeable than a country place which is your own and where you will be your own master?” But Cocky continued to laugh convulsively, holding his side and coughing. From his great height Hurstmanceaux looked down in scorn on the speaker. “Pray,” he said coldly, “do you ever ask how your wife gets the ready money she has to carry on with?” Kenilworth shook his head. “Not I. Mutual what do-ye-call it and non-interference is the only sound basis for domestic peace.” He spoke with an expression of implicit seriousness and good faith; only his left eye winked knowingly, as if he had said something very amusing indeed. Hurstmanceaux wondered if it would be within decent manners to kick one’s brother-in-law on his own hearth. “You are an unutterable scoundrel, Cocky,” he said, with an effort mastering his impulse to use acts instead of words. Kenilworth remained unmoved. “That’s libel. A beak would fine you a fiver for it,” he said placidly. “Do you happen to have got a fiver about you?” “Go and ask Brancepeth for one,” said Hurstmanceaux, white with rage. “Oh, Lord!” said the other innocently. “I’ve had _his_ last ages ago. He is a very poor devil is Harry, a very poor devil, else we shouldn’t be in this strait.” Hurstmanceaux approached him so closely that Cocky, whose nerves were shaken by much absinthe and angostura, trembled. “I would sooner my sister were on the pavement of the Haymarket than that she were the wife of such a cur as you.” Cocky breathed more freely. “That is a very exaggerated remark,” he murmured. “You are so very stagy, my dear Ronald, so very stagy. You should have lived a century or two ago.”