"Then Uncle Falcon set himself to compass this result, but without success. However profound might be my inexperience, I knew how to keep men at arm's length, thank goodness! But, as the happy years went by, we periodically reverted to our one point of difference. At the close of each discussion, Uncle Falcon used to say: 'I shall win, Diana! Some day you will have to admit that I have won.' His eyes used to gleam beneath his shaggy brows, and I would turn the subject; because I could not give in, yet I felt it was becoming almost a mania with Uncle Falcon.

"It was the only thing in which I failed to please him. His pride in my riding, and in anything else I could do, was touching beyond words. He remodelled the kennels, and financed the hunt in our neighbourhood, on condition that I was Master.

"One day his speech suddenly became thick and difficult. He sent for Mr. Inglestry, our old family friend and adviser, and was closeted with him for over an hour.

"When Mr. Inglestry came out of the library, his face was grave; his manner, worried.

"'Go to your uncle, Miss Rivers,' he said. 'He has been exciting himself a good deal, over a matter about which I felt bound to expostulate, and I think he needs attention.'

"I went into the library.

"Uncle Falcon's eyes were brighter than ever, though his lips twitched. 'I shall win, Diana,' he said. 'Some day you will have to admit that I have won. You will have to say: "Uncle Falcon, you have won."'

"I knelt down in front of him. 'No other man will ever win me, dear. So I can say it at once. Uncle Falcon, you have won.'

"'Foolish girl!' he said; then looked at me with inexpressible affection. 'I w-want you to be happy,' he said. 'I w-want you to be as h-happy as I would have made Geraldine.'

"Geraldine was my mother.

"On the following day, Uncle Falcon sent for another lawyer, a young man just opening a practice in Riversmead. He arrived with his clerk, but only spent a very few minutes in the library, and as we have never heard from him since, no transaction of importance can have taken place. Mr. Inglestry had the will and the codicil.

"A few nights later, I was summoned to my uncle's room. He neither spoke nor moved again; but his eyes were still bright beneath the bushy eyebrows. He knew me to the end. Those living eyes, in the already dead body, seemed to say: 'Diana, I shall win.'