At which Sue Breckenridge—­who had been listening with tense-strung nerves to the interview taking place in her presence—­laughed, with an hysterical little sob shaking her.  Both men looked at her.

“Poor Sue,” said Brown.  “She doesn’t like to have you quarrel with me, yet it’s all she can do to keep from quarrelling with me herself!  Between you, if you don’t undermine my purpose, it will be only because I’ve been preparing my defenses for a good while and have strong patrols out at the weak points.”

“I give you fair warning, I’ll undermine it yet if I can,” and Atchison gripped Brown’s hand with fervor before he went away, charging Sue Breckenridge with the responsibility of bringing her brother to the dinner to be given that evening.

“Now, what”—­said Brown, turning to his writing-table when Atchison had gone, and absently picking up a bronze paper-weight which lay there—­“put it into his head to fire a dinner at me the moment he knew I was here?”

“We all have a suspicion,” said Sue, watching him as she spoke, “that he and Helena are ready to announce their engagement.  It may have popped into his head that with you here it was just the time to do it.  Of course,” she went on hurriedly, in answer to something she thought she saw leap into her brother’s face, “we don’t absolutely know that they’re engaged.  He’s been devoted for a good while, and since he’s never been much that sort with women it looks as if it meant something.”

“It looks it on his part,” said Brown, opening a drawer in the table and appearing to search therein.  “Does it look it on hers?”

“Not markedly so.  But Helena’s getting on—­she must be twenty-six or seven—­and she always seems happy with him.  Of course that’s no evidence, for she has such a charmingly clever way with men you never can tell when she’s bored—­and certainly they can’t.  It’s just that it seems such a splendidly fitting match we’re confident there’s ground for our expectations.”

“I see.  Altogether, that dinner promises well for sensations—­of one sort or another.  Meanwhile, shall we pitch into business?”

Together they went through Brown’s apartment, which was a large one, and comprised everything which he had once considered necessary to the comfort of a bachelor establishment.  As he looked over that portion of the place pertaining to the cooking and serving of food he smiled rather grimly at the contrast it inevitably brought to his mind.  Standing before the well-filled shelves in the butler’s pantry he eyed a certain cherished set of Sèvres china, thinking of the cheap blue-and-white ware which now filled all his needs, and recalling with a sense of amusement the days, not so long past, when he would have considered himself ill served had his breakfast appeared in such dishes.

“It’s all in the way you look at it, Sue,” he exclaimed, opening the doors of leaded glass and taking down a particularly choice example of the ceramic art in the shape of a large Satsuma plate.  “Look at that, now!  Why should a chop taste any better off that plate than off the one I ate from this morning at daybreak?  It tastes no better—­I vow it doesn’t taste as good.  I’ve a keener appetite now than last year, when Sing Lee, my Chinese cook, was cudgelling his Asiatic brains to tempt me.”