"I don't know whether he would want. Should you object?" "Oh, no," said Harry, again with the weary indifference that seemed to have fastened on him now. "I've been gossiping," she said, "with Mrs Trumbler and Miss Swinkerton." "Good Lord!" "Miss Swinkerton says your engagement to Janie will be announced directly after the funeral." "And Major Duplay says that directly it's announced----!" "You don't mean to tell me anything about it?" "Really, I don't see why I should. Well, if you like--I want to marry her." Mina had really known this well for a long while, yet she did not like to hear it. She had been spinning fancies about the man; what he had in his mind for himself was very prosaic. At least it seemed so to her--though she would have appreciated the dramatic side of it, had he told her of his idea of living with the big check by him. "I can't help thinking that somehow you'll do something more exciting than that." "She won't marry me?" He was not looking at her, and he spoke rather absently. "I don't suppose she'll refuse you, but--no, I've just a feeling. I can't explain." "A feeling? What feeling?" He was irritable, but his attention was caught again. "That something more's waiting for you." "That it's my business to go on affording you amusement perhaps?" Mina glanced at him; he was smiling; he had become good-tempered. "Oh, I don't expect you to do it for that reason, but if you do it----" "Do what?" he asked, laughing outright. "I don't know. But if you do, I shall be there to see--looking so hard at you, Mr Tristram." She paused, and then added, "I should like Cecily Gainsborough to come into it too." "Confound Cecily Gainsborough! Good-by," said Harry. He left with her two main impressions; the first was that he had not the least love for the girl whom he meant to marry; the second that he hardly cared to deny to her that he hated Cecily Gainsborough because she was the owner of Blent. "All the same," she thought, "I suppose he'll marry Janie, and I'm certain he'll keep Blent." Yet he seemed to take no pleasure in his prospects and just at this moment not much in his possessions. Mina was puzzled, but did not go so far wrong as to conceive him conscience-stricken. She concluded that she must wait for light. XI A PHANTOM BY THE POOL