"Bob, you are really in earnest? It isn't one of your jokes?" "Jokes, indeed!" said Charteris, in high dudgeon. "I'll show you how much in earnest I am, Lieutenant Henry Gerrard. We'll go to business to-morrow, if you please." "Then you wish to draw the lots to-night?" "No, don't let us have any melodramatic nonsense with straws, or bits of wood of different lengths. We'll go down to the gateway to-morrow between one and two, when there's scarcely a creature about, and one shall look up the street, and the other down. Whoever can count twenty human beings first shall have first right to speak. Are you agreeable?" "All serene. But what if we both call out at once?" "Try again, of course. It ain't likely to happen twice. The sentry will think we have got a wager on, so there won't be any fuss." * * * * * * Charteris proved successful in the counting competition, announcing his twenty while Gerrard had only reached seventeen. As he was dining with the Cinnamonds that night, the fates seemed to be propitious. But when Gerrard came back from supping with the James Antonys, he found his friend reclining on the verandah, in an attitude suggestive of despondency. "Sold again!" said a sepulchral voice from the recesses of the long chair. "You don't mean that she has refused you, Bob?" "Oh, don't I?" the voice suggested something more than sulkiness. "If I don't, I'm very much mistaken. She told me that I wasn't what she expected, in a way that implied I was a very poor creature indeed. If that was acceptance, all I can say is, I hope you may be accepted too!" CHAPTER XV. MUTTERINGS OF THE STORM. "Onora, my dearest little one, have you anything to tell me?" Unable to bear the suspense any longer, Lady Cinnamond had pursued her daughter to her room. "No, mamma; only that he is gone." "But you have not sent him away?" "I told him again that I could not marry him." "But I thought you cared for him!" Lady Cinnamond's regret was not unmixed with indignation. "When you thought he was dead, you said----" It was Honour's turn to be indignant. "I said I couldn't tell, mamma. And I don't like him as much now as I did when I thought he was dead." "These poor young men!" lamented her mother. "Then is the unfortunate Mr Gerrard to be made happy at last? Or is it some one else?" "It isn't any one!" cried Honour hotly. "Is it my fault if they will want to marry me? I am sure I have made it clear to them over and over again that I don't want to marry anybody." "My child, that is a thing that nothing will make clear to a man," said her mother solemnly--"especially when it is plain that you take pleasure in his society."