"A beautiful idea, Bob, if she was in love with me. But she isn't. Can you tell me you think she is?" Bob grunted inarticulately--an obvious, though not a skilful, evasion of the question. "And anyhow," Harry pursued, "the thing's at an end. I shan't marry her. Now if that suggests any action on your part I--well, I shall be glad I came to breakfast." He got up and went to the window, looking out on the neat little garden and to the paddock beyond. In a moment Bob Broadley's hand was laid on his shoulder. He turned and faced him. "What a thing for you! You--you lose it all?" "I have given it all up." "I can't realize it, you know. The change----" "Perhaps I can't either. I don't know that I want to, Bob." "Who made the discovery? How did it come out? Nobody ever had any suspicion of it!" Harry looked at him long and thoughtfully, but in the end he only shook his head, saying, "Well, it's true anyhow." "It beats me. I see what you mean about myself and--Still I give you my word I hate its happening. Who's this girl? Why is she to come here? Who knows anything about her?" "You don't, of course," Harry conceded with a smile. "No more did I a week ago." "Couldn't you have made a fight for it?" "Yes, a deuced good fight. But I chose to let it go. Now don't go on looking as if you didn't understand the thing. It's simple enough." "But Lady Tristram--your mother--must have known----" "The question didn't arise as long as my mother lived," said Harry quickly. "Her title was all right, of course." There was another question on the tip of Bob's tongue, but after a glance at Harry's face he did not put it; he could not ask Harry if he had known. "I'm hanged!" he muttered. "Yes, but you understand why I came here?" "Yes. That was kind." "Oh, no. I want to spike the Major's guns, you know." He laughed a little. "And--well, yes, I think I'm promoting the general happiness too, if you must know. Now I'm off, Bob." He held out his hand and Bob grasped it. "We'll meet again some day, when things have settled down. Beat Duplay for me, Bob. Good-by." "That's grit, real grit," muttered Bob, as he returned to the house after seeing Harry Tristram on his way. It was that--or else the intoxication of some influence whose power had not passed away. Whatever it was, it had a marked effect on Bob Broadley. There was an appearance of strength and resolution about it--as of a man knowing what he meant to do and doing it. As he inspected his pigs an hour later, Bob came to the conclusion that he himself was a poor sort of fellow. People who waited for the fruit to fall into their mouths were apt to find that a hand intervened and plucked it. That had happened to him once, and probably he could not have helped it; but he meant to try to prevent its happening again. He was in a ferment all the morning, partly on his own account, as much about the revolution which had suddenly occurred in the little kingdom on the banks of the Blent.