“Nonsense, my boy. I'm not a cripple that requires to be taken care of. Grown up men can't be for ever hanging on to--I was going to say, to each other's apron strings. London is your place. Perhaps after a time, when I am dead and gone,--a man must die some day, you know,--you'll like to come back to the old house and devote yourself entirely to research and be independent of two guinea fees and that kind of thing. That would be nice, wouldn't it, Ella?” The girl's heart throbbed at the share implied, but a tenderer feeling quieted it at once. “It would be impossible without you, Uncle Matthew,” she said. He rose with a laugh. “None of us are indispensable, not even the most futile. I'm going to dress. You'll dine here, of course, Syl? And, Ella, tell them to get up some of the '84' Pommery to drink good luck to Syl.” He walked out of the room with the brisk air of a man thoroughly pleased with life; but outside, in the passage, his face grew sad, and he mounted the stairs to his dressing-room very slowly, holding on to the balusters. The younger folks remained for a while longer in the library. Sylvester bent forward and broke a great lump of coal with the poker. “I'm not fit to black his boots, you know, My companionship means much more to him than Dorothy's does to me, and he gives it up without a murmur.” “And that settles the Dorothy question?” asked Ella, in the direct manner that sometimes embarrassed him. “Of course it settles it,” he cried warmly. “What a selfish beast you must have thought me!” “If you didn't love others so warmly, I shouldn't--” She came to a dead stop because his eyes were full upon her. “Well?” “I shouldn't care for you so much.” “Do you care very much for me?” he asked rather wistfully, and came to where she was standing with one foot on the fender. “You know I would do anything in the world you asked,” she answered in a low voice. “Some day I may claim your promise.” “You know I always keep my promises,” she said. The dressing bell clanged loudly through the house. Sylvester hurriedly departed so as to dress in time for dinner. But Ella lingered by the fire, the girl in her wondering whether she had said too much, and the woman in her filled with a delicious pity for the strong-brained, deep-natured man who seemed dumbly to be holding out his hands for her love. She gave it generously and gratefully. Compared with him, all other men seemed of small account, and in her aunt Lady Milmo's house, where most of her life was spent, she had seen all the sorts and conditions of males that a well-to-do collector of minor celebrities can gather around her in London. But to her direct mind the truest men of her acquaintance were Matthew Lanyon, her former guardian, whose title of uncle was purely one of courtesy, and Sylvester, with whom the old quasi-cousinly relations were being transmuted into sweeter ties. CHAPTER II--THE SHADOW IN A LIFE