Saltash chuckled to himself with mischievous amusement.  “My dear chap, I can’t get you out.  That’s just it.  I want you to stay there.”

Larpent muttered deeply and inarticulately, and began to drink.

Saltash turned round, glass in hand, and sat down on the edge of the high, cushioned fender.  “I really don’t think you are greatly to be pitied,” he remarked lightly.  “The child will soon be married and off your hands.”

“Oh, that’s the idea, is it?” said Larpent.  “Who’s going to marry her?  Young Brian?”

“Don’t you approve?” said Saltash.

“I don’t think it’ll come off,” said Larpent with decision.

“Why not?” An odd light flickered in the younger man’s eyes for an instant.  “Are you going to refuse your consent?”

“I?” Larpent shrugged his shoulders.  “Are you going to give yours?”

Saltash made an elaborate gesture.  “I shall bestow my blessing with both hands.”

Larpent looked at him fixedly for a few seconds.  “You’re a very wonderful man, my lord,” he remarked drily at length.

Saltash laughed.  “Have you only just discovered that?”

Larpent drained his tumbler gravely and put it down.  “All the same, I don’t believe it will come off,” he said.

Saltash moved impatiently.  “You always were an unbeliever.  But anyone can see they were made for each other.  Of course it will come off.”

“You want it to come off?” asked Larpent.

“It is my intention that it shall,” said Saltash royally.

“You’re playing providence in the girl’s interest.  Is that it?” Again Larpent’s eyes, shrewd and far-seeing, were fixed upon him.  They held a glint of humour.  “It’s a tricky job, my lord.  You’ll wish you hadn’t before you’ve done.”

“Think so?” said Saltash.

“If you haven’t begun to already,” said Larpent.

Saltash looked down at him with a comical twist of the eyebrows.  “You’re very analytical to-night.  What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” said Larpent bluntly.  “Except that you’re making a mistake.”

“Indeed?” For a moment Saltash’s look was haughty; then he began to smile again.  “I see you’re burning to give your advice,” he said tolerantly.  “Fire away, if it does you any good!”

Larpent’s eyes, very steady under their fair, bushy brows, were still unwaveringly upon him.  “No, I don’t presume to give you advice,” he said.  “But I’ll tell you something which you may or may not know.  That young woman you have so kindly bestowed upon me as a daughter worships the ground you tread on, and—­that being the case—­she isn’t very likely to make a dazzling success of it if she marries young Bernard Brian.”

He ceased to speak, and simultaneously Saltash jerked himself to his feet with a short French oath that sounded like the snarl of an angry animal.  He went across to the windows that were thrown wide to the summer night and stood before one of them with his head flung back in the attitude of one who challenges the universe.