“You won’t expect much of me?” he said, with his glass in his eye, looking vaguely down the river. “My wretched health, you know; er--there’s one good thing about it for you--I may kick over the bucket any day; one lung gone, you know.” “Yes,” replied his companion; “I’ve always heard so. But you’ll let me hang on my own hook, drive my own team, won’t you?” Cocky nodded. He perfectly understood the allegorical phrases. “Oh, Lord, yes,” he made answer. “I’m a very easy-going fellow. Take my own way and let other people take theirs.” “I warn you I shall take mine,” said the young beauty--she looked him full in the eyes. Cocky’s own pale, drowsy eyes looked back into hers with so cynical a smile in them that for once she was disconcerted. “Lord, what’ll that matter to me?” he responded candidly. “I only marry to make the Pater come down with the flimsy. We shall have to agree over financial questions, you and I, that’s all. Most married people only meet over the accounts, you know.” The young lady laughed. “Very well, then. If you see it in that sensible light, we’ll say it’s concluded.” Cocky had a gleam of conscience in his brandy-soaked soul. “You might do better, you know,” he said slowly. “You’re awfully fetching and you’re very young, and I’m--well, I’m a bad lot--and--and wretched health, you know.” “I know; but you suit me,” said his companion with brevity. “I shall have the jewels, sha’n’t I?” “Yes; I’ve spoken to the Pater; he’ll let you have ’em.” “_Tôpe là donc!_” she said frankly, and she held out her pretty gloved right hand. Cocky respectfully kissed the tips of her fingers. Then he grinned. “Let’s go and ask the Pater’s blessing! He’s over there with the Princess.” “The devil take her if she hasn’t got some card up her sleeve that she don’t show me,” he thought as he continued to walk on beside her. “But she’s awfully fetching, and she’ll be great fun, and the Pater will think I’m reforming, and he’ll come down with the blunt, and what a wax Beric’ll be in!” Beric was his next brother, Alberic Orme. Meantime the lovely and youthful creature, who brushed the grass with her bronze kid boots beside him, pursued similar reflections. “He don’t look as if he’d live a year; and he’s too far gone to bother me much, and such a _crétin_ as that Harry won’t mind, and the vulture’s egg is worth a little worry.” Her relatives, and especially her eldest brother, were horrified by her decision; but their persuasions and their entreaties were as ineffectual as their condemnation.