"I do know something about it. You see, guns and swords and pistols are in my line. I'm good at killing things. I ought to have been a soldier, only I couldn't pass examinations, so I sort of interest myself in the old weapons and do my killing in imagination." "You give a regular lecture, don't you?" "Well, you know," said Dick modestly, "a lot of them are historical. There's a mace used by a bishop, an ancestor of ours. He couldn't wield a sword in battle, so he cottoned on to that, and in order to salve his conscience before using it he would cry out 'Gare! gare!'--and they say that's what our name comes from--see? 'Ware--Ware.' He was the founder of our family--though, of course, he oughtn't to have been. And then we have the duelling pistols my great-grandfather shot Lord Estcourt with. They're beautiful things--in the case just as he left it after the duel, with powder, balls, and caps, all complete. It's a romantic story--" "My dear Dick," interposed Mrs. Ware, with fragile, uplifted hand, "please don't offend us with these horrible family scandals. Katharine, dear, are you going to the vicar's garden party this afternoon? If you are, will you take a message to Mrs. Cook?" So Katherine being monopolized, Dick was silenced, and as Austin and Viviette were talking in a lively but unintelligible way about a thing, or a play, or a horse called Nietzsche, he relapsed into the heavy, full-blooded man's animal enjoyment of his food and the sensitive's consciousness of heartache. When the ladies had left the table and the coffee had been brought in, and the men's cigars were lit, Austin said: "What a magnificently beautiful creature she has grown into." "Whom do you mean?" asked Dick. "Why, Viviette, of course. She's the most fascinating thing I've come across for years." "Do you think so?" said Dick shortly. "Don't you?" Dick shrugged his shoulders. Austin laughed. "What a stolid old beggar you are. To you, she's just the same little girl that used to run about here in short frocks. If she were a horse you'd have a catalogue yards long of her points." "But as she's a lady," said Dick, tugging his moustache, "I don't care to catalogue them." Austin laughed again. "Fairly scored!" He raised his cup to his lips, took a sip, and set it down again. "Why on earth," said he with some petulance, "can't mother give us decent coffee?" CHAPTER II THE CONSPIRATORS