"I think it was. I didn't want to be browbeaten into submission--as you browbeat poor Virginia, and as you would Tony if he hadn't got a good dash of the Brabazon devil in him. You're a confirmed bully, you know." "I shouldn't have bullied you." There was an odd note of wistfulness in the harsh voice, and for a moment the handsome, arrogant old face softened incredibly. "I shouldn't have bullied you, Susan." "Yes, you would. You couldn't have helped it. You'd like to bully my little Ann into marrying Tony if you dared--monster!" The grim mouth beneath the clipped moustache relaxed into an unwilling smile. "I believe I would," he admitted. "Hang it all, Susan, it would settle the boy if he were married. He wants a wife to look after him." "To look after him?"--with a faintly ironical inflection. "That's what I said"--irritably. "That's--that's what wife's for, dammit! Isn't it?" "Oh, no." She shook her head regretfully. "That idea's extinct as the dodo. Antiquated, Philip--very." He glared at her ferociously. "Worth more than half your modern ideas put together," he retorted. "Women, don't know their duty nowadays. If they'd get married and have babies and keep house in the good, old-fashioned way, instead of trying to be doctors and barristers and the Lord knows what, the world would be a lot better off. A good wife makes a good man--and that's job enough for any woman." "I should think it might be," agreed Lady Susan meditatively. "But it sounds a trifle feeble, doesn't it? I mean, on the part of the good man. It's making a sort of lean-to greenhouse of him, isn't it?" "You're outrageous, Susan! I'm not a 'lean-to' anything, but do you suppose I'd be the bad-tempered old ruffian I am--at least, you say I am--if you'd married me thirty years ago?" "Twenty times worse, probably," she replied promptly. "Because, like most wives, I should have spoiled you." Sir Philip looked out of the window. "I've missed that spoiling, Susan," he said. Once again that incongruous little note of wistfulness sounded in his voice. But, an instant later, Lady Susan wondered if her ears had deceived her, for he swung round and snapped out in his usual hectoring manner: "Then you won't help me in this?" "Help you to marry off Ann to Tony? No, I won't. For one thing, I don't want to spare her. And if ever I have to, it's going to be to some one who'll look after _her_--and take jolly good care of her, too!" "Obstinate woman! Well--well"--irritably. "What am I to do, then?" "Can't you manage your own nephew?" "No, I can't, confound it! Told me this morning he wanted to be an architect. An architect!" He spoke as though an architect were something that crawled. "Imagine a Brabazon of Lorne turning architect!"