He raised a hand to ask to be heard out. "But I should like to feel that I could at any moment lay my hand on a big lump of ready money--say fifty, or even a hundred, thousand pounds. I should like to be able to pull it out of my breeches' pocket and say, 'Take that and hold your tongue!'" He looked at her to see if she followed what was in his mind. "I think they'd take it," he ended. "I mean if things got as far as that, you know." "You mean the Gainsboroughs?" "Yes. Oh, anybody else would be cheaper than that. Fifty thousand would be better than a very doubtful case. But it would have to be done directly--before a word was heard about it. I should like to live with the check by me." He spoke very simply, as another man might speak of being ready to meet an improvement-rate or an application from an impecunious brother. "Don't you think it would be a good precaution?" he asked. Whether he meant the marriage, the check, or the lady, was immaterial; it came to the same thing. "It's all very troublesome," Lady Tristram complained. "It really half spoils our lives, doesn't it, Harry? One always has to be worrying." The smile whose movements had excited Mina Zabriska's interest made its appearance on Harry's face. He had never been annoyed by his mother's external attitude toward the result of her own doings, but he was often amused at it. "Why do you smile?" she asked innocently. "Well, worrying's a mild term," he explained evasively. "It's my work in the world, you know--or it seems as if it was going to be." "You'd better think about it," Lady Tristram concluded, not wishing to think about it any more herself. "You wouldn't tell Mr Iver anything about the difficulty, would you?" "The difficulty" had become her usual way of referring to their secret. "Not a word. I'm not called upon to justify my position to Iver." No shadow of doubt softened the clearness of Harry's conviction on this point. He rose, filled his pipe again, and began to walk up and down. He was at his old game, counting chances, one by one, every chance, trying to eliminate risks, one by one, every risk, so that at last he might take his ease and say without fear of contradiction, "Here sits Tristram of Blent." To be thus was--something; but to be safely thus was so much more that it did not seem to him a great thing to carry out the plan which he had suggested to Lady Tristram. To be sure, he was not in love with anybody else, which makes a difference, though it is doubtful whether it would have made any to him. Had the question arisen at that moment he would have said that nothing could make any difference. "Did you go up to the Lodge, Harry?" his mother called to him as one of his turns brought him near her. "Oh, yes; I forgot to tell you. I did, and I found Madame Zabriska having a look at us from the terrace, so I had a little talk with her. I didn't see the uncle." "What's she like?" This was a favorite question of Lady Tristram's.