He spoke without bitterness, without a hint of self-pity, and she was silent. He was a child of a second marriage, and that had made it worse for him. When old Lord Chelford followed Dick’s mother to the grave, the second son’s portion was his. The estate, the title, the very car he had used as his own, passed from him. A tiny estate in Hertfordshire that brought two hundred a year, some old jewellery of his mother’s and a thousand pounds came the way of the second son. And the thousand pounds had never been paid. In some mysterious fashion it had been swallowed up.

Mr Arthur Gine had settled the estate. In all the circumstances Dick felt happier when he did not think of that thousand pounds. Yet, for some reason or other, he thought of it now, and as though she read his thoughts dimly, and associated his reserve with her brother, she asked:

“You don’t like Arthur, do you?”

“What makes you say that?” he said, in genuine surprise. He had never betrayed his aversion to the dandified lawyer.

“I know,” she nodded wisely. “He exasperates me sometimes, and I can well imagine that a man like you would hate him.”

Dick smiled.

“Harry doesn’t hate him anyway, and he is the person who counts.”

She looked round at him, swinging the crop idly.

“It doesn’t seem real to me that I’m to be married at all – it was such a funny proposal, Dick, so polite, so formal, so – unreal! I think if it had come in any other way–” She shook her head.

Dick wondered a little drearily how his brother would propose. Harry was something of a novice at the love game; once he had had a pretty secretary, and on a warm June afternoon Dick had interrupted what was tantamount to a proposal from the enterprising young lady. And the flustered Harry would have agreed to her matrimonial suggestions, only Dick had happened along – and the calculating Miss Wenner had left Fossaway Manor rather hurriedly. He remembered this happening.

“I suppose if he had proposed in the conventional way you wouldn’t have accepted him?”

“I don’t know,” she said dubiously. “But it was quaint and – queer. I like Harry awfully. I have often wondered if he would like me if–” She did not finish her sentence.

“If you weren’t so horribly rich?” smiled Dick. “You’re not paying him a very high compliment.” She held out her arms and he lifted her down, though there seemed no necessity for it, as she was a very agile young person as a rule.

“Dick,” she said, as he crossed the stile and they walked side by side towards the main road, “what am I to do?”

“About what?” he asked.

“About Harry and everything.”

He had no answer to this.