“I don’t say I understand, my dear,” he replied very tenderly. “But I accept the phenomenon.” He turned and looked out of the window at the quiet road. Presently a taxi-cab drew up outside. “Here’s Godfrey,” he said. She rose. “I’ll go down and meet him. It’s no use his climbing all these difficult stairs.” “You’ll come again, won’t you?” And seeing a flicker of hesitation pass over her face, he added: “If only to let me show you Quong Ho.” “Yes, I’ll come again,” she replied, “if only to show you——” “What?” “That I’m sorry.” She moved quickly to the door, which he opened, and he followed her downstairs. In the vestibule they met Godfrey. Gloom overspread the young man’s candid face and dejection marked his behaviour, neither of which could be accounted for by the fact of the Medical Board having given him, as he announced, a further two months. Baltazar’s proposal to run over soon to Churton Towers for a talk, he welcomed with polite lack of enthusiasm. He took leave with the solemnity of a medical man departing from a house with a corpse in it. “It doesn’t seem to be one of the House of Baltazar’s lucky days,” said Baltazar to himself, as he went up to his room. CHAPTER XVI IT was not till long afterwards that Baltazar learned the cause of his son’s discomfiture. Marcelle learned it at once. The boy exploded with pent-up indignation. Dorothy had turned him down, callously turned him down. Could Marcelle imagine such heartlessness? He had gone to her after his Board. Seeing that she had undertaken to keep him in the army, it was only civil to report progress. Besides, the house had been open to him since childhood. Well, there she was alone in the drawing-room. Looked bewitching. Jolly as possible. Everything right as rain. Then, he didn’t know how it happened—perhaps because she hadn’t discouraged him at the Carlton—anyhow there it was; he lost his head; told her he loved her, worshipped her and all the rest of it, and asked her to marry him. She broke into peals of laughter and recommended him not to be an idiot. She had the infernal impudence to laugh at him! If she had been a man he would have wrung her neck. “And that isn’t all,” he cried. “What do you think she had the colossal nerve to tell me? That she was engaged to my brother Leopold. Leopold! ‘Why,’ I said, ‘only the other day you informed me you were fed up with Leopold.’ ‘Oh! that,’ she said airily, ‘was before the engagement.’ Apparently the brute’s just home on leave and has stolen a march on me. Easy enough with two feet,” he added bitterly.