In his despair, he confided in Tom Leigh again. Tom saw no reason to change his previous opinion. The hole seemed if anything deeper, now that two were in it. “I don’t see but what you’ve got to escape the countess, bring Serge to life, kill old Terwilliger, and thus give her two years’ mourning,” said he. “Why the deuce didn’t you find her out first?” he added, ruefully. “Old Terwilliger only married her eighteen months ago.” “I don’t know,” said May. “Why don’t you invent his railway schemes, and discover his Cornish mines?” “True,” assented Tom. “Old Dehon always does get in on the ground floor. However,” he added, brightening up, “if you can marry her, you’ll get her and his money, too.” “Damn his money,” said May. Tom looked shocked, and changed the subject, and May’s heart continued so to bleed internally that soon Gladys Dehon’s marble brow would soften to pity as she saw him wane. Meantime Terwilliger’s capon-lined stomach waxed apace, and even his digestion was to all appearance unimpaired. Now, it is probable that ours is the first civilization known to history where this state of things could exist, be mutually known, and continue in tranquil permanency. But it does--that is, it nearly always does--and it is a credit, after all, to our teaching and our times that it does so. The ancient Perseus cut Andromeda’s chains, and departed with her by the next P. and O. steamer they could signal; the modern one sits down on the strand beside her, and he and Andromeda die to slow music--that is, in case either should chance to die before the malady is cured. And Andromeda’s master relies on the strength of his chains and on Perseus’s good bringing-up, and is not wholly displeased at the situation. Particularly for a sly old stock-broker like Terwilliger Dehon, whose idea of values is based on the opinion of the street, a Perseus to his Andromeda is half the fun. The world, on the whole, approves the situation; but the husband Dehon is not a popular character, and it likes the Perseus better. Not, of course, that it is willing to condone anything improper, particularly on the part of Andromeda. But Austin May stood the passive rôle for precisely twelve months; and then he made up his mind that something would have to break. He hoped it might be the neck of old Terwilliger; but Providence seldom spoils a dramatic situation by so simple a denouement. And, to tell the truth, considering the way the three rode to hounds, it was much more likely to be his own or Gladys’s. One thing was sure: their triangular relations were too strained to continue. He came to this conclusion after one precisely similar day upon Exmoor, a year after their first meeting; except that upon this occasion the deer took to the sea below Glenthorne and was drowned, and he and Gladys rode homeward side by side in silence.