"Ann's the best pal Tony could possibly have, so, for goodness' sake, be content with that and don't get addling your brains by trying to marry her off to him. Match-making isn't a man's job. A female child of twelve could beat the cleverest man that's hatched at the game." Lady Susan Hallett fired off her remarks, as was her wont, with the vigour and precision of a machine-gun. There was always a delightful definiteness both about her ideas and the expression of them. The man she addressed was standing with his back to the open French window of the pretty salon, angrily oblivious of the blue waters of Lac Léman which lapped placidly against the stone edges of the _quai_ below. He was a tall, fierce-looking old man, with choleric blue eyes and an aristocratic beak of a nose that jutted out above a bristling grey moustache. A single eyeglass dangled from a broad, black ribbon round his neck. "One of the old school" was written all over him--one of the old, autocratic school which believed that "a man should be master in his own house, b'gad!" By which--though he would never have admitted it--Sir Philip Brabazon inferred a kind of divinely appointed dictatorship over the souls and bodies of the various members of his household which even included the right to arrange and determine their lives for them, without reference to their personal desires and tastes. It was odd, therefore, that his chief friend and confidante--and the woman he would have married thirty years ago if she would only have had him--should be Lady Susan, as tolerant and modern in her outlook as he was archaic. She was a tall, sturdily built woman of the out-of-door, squiress type. Her fine-shaped head was crowned by a wealth of grey hair, simply coiled in a big knot on the nape of her neck and contrasting rather attractively with her very black, arched eyebrows and humorous dark eyes. Those same eyes were now regarding Sir Philip with a quizzical expression of amusement. "Besides," she pursued. "Ann wouldn't have half as much pull with him if she _were_ his wife, let me tell you." "You think not?" "I'm sure. A man will let himself be lectured and generally licked into shape by the woman he wants to marry--but after marriage he usually prefers to do all the lecturing that's required himself." The old man shot a swift glance at her from under a pair of shaggy brows. "How do you know?" he demanded rudely. "You're not married." Lady Susan nodded. "That's why." "Do you mean--do you mean--" he began stormily, then, meeting her quiet, humorous gaze, stammered off into silence. Presently he fixed his monocle in one of his fierce old eyes and surveyed her from behind it as from behind a barricade. "Do you mean me to understand that that's the reason you declined to marry me?" She laughed a little.