“Bitterly!” he exclaimed. “My dad threw me out when I was twelve--he married again--I wasn’t wanted, and since then I have never known a home. I have knocked about the world. I have never seen a family life and when Jack used to talk of his people I never believed that anything like this existed! And now that I see what it means to a chap, it makes me bitter, that’s all!” “Poor boy!” “Oh, no! Oh, no,” he hurried. “For God’s sake, don’t pity me! I don’t want to grouch. I have been hungry, I have always been poor, but I’ve managed to get something of life everywhere! I suppose you’d call me an adventurer.” He threw back his beautiful head and laughed. “It is a good adventure all right and I am glad I am part of it.” He took her hand, looked down at her with his wonderful frank smile, and with the courage that conquers the world. “I am glad that all those hard paths have brought me here to you. I have seen a lot of women, but I never cared like this.” She believed it and he kissed her again deeply, deeply, many times; indifferent to the fact that they might be observed, and how serious it would be for her; but she freed herself saying: “What madness! This must have its end, you know!” And he murmured passionately, “Yes, it must have its end, dearest. When can I see you?” “To-night,” she said, “in the music room at twelve--at half past twelve.” Unmistakably some one was coming in the hall. Mrs. Hereford turned and hurriedly left the room. After she had gone out Ramsay stood motionless beside the long tables. Life, which had been so full of unkindness to him and so full of caprices, seemed at last to have smiled upon him. Only certain moments in the air when above the German lines he had escaped the enemy’s barrage and later brought down his black foe--seen him fall, only in moments of such magnitude, had he felt lifted as high as to-day. Here some one called: “Nell! Nell, where are you?” And down through the long room, next where his own eager footsteps had gone “stounin’” on the parquet floor, came Patricia Hereford, the bride, in her wedding dress, looking for her stepmother. She stood hesitatingly on the threshold between the rooms. “Where’s mother, Captain Ramsay?” Patricia passed for a beauty. She was happy and healthy, lit by young expectancy and young hope and love. White as a lily, and tall as a lily, she stood looking about at her beautiful things as a child might at his Christmas gifts. “What a crowd of things!” she murmured. “What an awful lot, isn’t it? And all for little me.” She nodded and laughed. “It will take a thousand years to write letters of thanks for them all. I’ll make Nelly do it.”