The next day happened to be a Sunday. Richmond himself motored down to meet Peter, who was arriving in time for lunch. As the young man descended from the train it took no skill whatever at reading faces to discover that he was out of humor--had been brooding over Beatrice’s treatment of him, and in the brooding had lost nothing of the grouch he had taken away with him. A weak man never looks so weak as when he is out of humor; accordingly, Peter was showing his true character, or lack of character, with a distinctness that irritated Richmond even as he reflected how admirably it fitted in with his plans. Peter was not to blame for his weakness. He had not had the chance to become otherwise. He had been deprived of that hand-to-hand strife with life which alone makes a man strong. Usually, however, the dangerous truth as to his weakness was well hidden by the fictitious seeming of strength which obstinacy, selfishness, and the adulation of a swarm of sycophants and dependents combine to give a man of means and position. Richmond, for all his reverence for Peter’s lineage and wealth nearly two centuries old, had not for an instant been deceived as to his personal character. One reason why he felt so satisfied with him as a son-in-law was his belief that Beatrice could be happy only with a man she could rule; and on this Sunday of Peter’s arrival with his weakness stripped naked to the most casual eye by his bad humor, Richmond was better pleased than ever with his selection for his high-strung daughter. “Peter,” said he sharply, when he had him in the limousine. The young man clinched his hands in a feeble gesture of preparation for resolute resistance. “I’ve got to go West the middle of the month. I want you and Beatrice to marry before I go--say, on the twentieth. You have to be in London early in the second week in June?” “Yes,” said Peter reluctantly--the yes of a man lacking the moral courage to say no. “I’ll not be in the East again before the middle of June--maybe July.” “Can’t do it,” said Peter with a sudden scowl at the back of the chauffeur separated from them by thick glass. “Why not?” inquired Richmond in the animal trainer’s tone and with the animal trainer’s eye upon the unhappy Peter. “Why not?” “I’m not sure I shall marry at all,” said Peter, and his fright distorted his bluff at resoluteness into a sort of nervous impudence, like that of the schoolboy braving the teacher’s uplifted ferule because the rest of the school is waiting with ears that long to hear him howl and beg. Richmond twisted his small, wiry body round in the seat that he might bring the various batteries in and behind his face full upon Vanderkief. “Is this a joke?” he demanded. “I wish it were,” replied Peter diplomatically. “I’ve made some discoveries that will compel me to--to relieve your daughter of--of the engagement which--which is so distasteful to her.”