But though so exhausted as to be scarcely conscious, he still clung fast to Piers, not suffering him to stir from side; and there Piers remained, chafing the cold hands administering brandy, while Victor, invaluable in an emergency, procured pillows, blankets, hot-water bottles, everything that his fertile brain could suggest to restore the failing strength.

Again, though slowly, Sir Beverley rallied, recovered his faculties, came back to full understanding.  “Had anything to eat?” he rapped out so suddenly that Piers, kneeling beside him, jumped with astonishment.

“I, sir?  No, I’m not hungry,” he said.  “You’re feeling better, what?  Can I get you something?”

“Oh, don’t be a damn’ fool!” said Sir Beverley.  “Tell ’em to fetch some lunch!”

It was the turning-point.  From that moment he began to recover in a fashion that amazed Piers, cast aside blankets and pillows, sternly forbade Piers to summon the doctor, and sat up before the fire with a grim refusal to be coddled any longer.

They lunched together in the warmth of the blazing logs, and Sir Beverley became so normal in his attitude that Piers began at last to feel reassured.

He did not broach the matter that lay between them, knowing well that his grandfather’s temperament was not such as to leave it long in abeyance; and they smoked together in peace after the meal as though the strife of the previous evening had never been.

But the memory of it overhung them both, and finally at the end of a lengthy silence Sir Beverley turned his stone-grey eyes upon his grandson and spoke.

“Well?  What have you to say for yourself?”

Piers came out of a reverie and looked up with a faint rueful smile.  “Nothing, sir,” he said.

“Nothing?  What do you mean by that?” Sir Beverley’s voice was sharp.  “You go away like a raving lunatic, and stay away all night, and then come back with nothing to say.  What have you been up to?  Tell me that!”

Piers leaned slowly forward, took up the poker and gently pushed it into the fire.  “She won’t have me,” he said, with his eyes upon the leaping flames.

“What?” exclaimed Sir Beverley.  “You’ve been after that hussy again?”

Piers’ brows drew together in a thick, ominous line; but he merely nodded and said, “Yes.”

“The devil you have!” ejaculated Sir Beverley.  “And she refused you?”

“She did.”  Again very softly Piers poked at the blazing logs, his eyes fixed and intent.  “It served me right—­in a way,” he said, speaking meditatively, almost as if to himself.  “I was a hound—­to ask her.  But—­somehow—­I was driven.  However,” he drove the poker in a little further, “it’s all the same now as she’s refused me.  That’s why,” he turned his eyes suddenly upon Sir Beverley, “there’s nothing to be said.”

There was no defiance in his look, but it held something of a baffling quality.  It was almost as if in some fashion he were conscious of relief.