Klondyke resumed his frown. He felt rather at sea. He was, in spite of birth and training, a man of primal instincts; he looked at things in an elemental way. Either a man was a good chap or he was not. If he was a good chap, no matter where he may have started from in the race of life, he was fitted by nature to marry his sister. If he was not a good chap, no matter what else he was or might be, he didn't count anyway. "You see"--the plaintive voice of the Prince broke in upon Klondyke's unsubtle analysis of the situation--"no one knows anything about him. Ambrose sprang him on us from nowhere, as you might say. Of course, he's a man with a sort of reputation ... in his own line ... but he's not one of us ... and it wouldn't have so much mattered if he had been a gentleman." "There I don't altogether agree," said Klondyke with conviction, but without vehemence. "I always think with Ted Ambrose on that point. Gentlemen are not made. They are born, like poets and cricketers." "That's rot," said the Prince, with a sudden deepening of his tone of courtesy which made it seem excessive. "You are mixing, I think--aren't you--two entirely different things?" "No, I don't think so," said Klondyke. "Harper is not a chap who would ever go back on a pal, and that's all that matters." The Prince suddenly became so deeply angry that he decided to go to bed at once, and accordingly did so. XVI For a number of people there followed anxious days. Mary's friends made no secret of their belief that she was losing her head. They were much troubled. She was a universal favorite, one of those charming people who seem to have an almost poetic faculty of common sense. But she was thought to be far too wise ever to be carried away by anything. The Pridmores, at heart, were conventional. They were abreast of the times, were lively and intelligent, and could be at ease in Bohemia, but up till now Bohemia had known the deference due to Queen Street, Mayfair. Lady Pridmore had always thought--and Silvia, Uncle George, and the Prince had agreed with her--that Mary was predestined for Edward Ambrose. For one thing, Edward, when his father died, would be very well off--not that the Pridmores were in the least mercenary. They simply knew what money means to such a being as man in such a world as the present. Then Edward was liked by them all. It had long been a mystery why Mary had not married him. He was always her faithful cavalier, and a rather exceptional man. And now she had suddenly gone off at half cock, as Uncle George expressed it. During this period, tribulation was rife at other places also. Edward Ambrose was in no enviable frame of mind. The woman he loved and the friend he served were cutting deeply into his life. But of one thing he was convinced--neither of them realized their danger.