Keith smiled.  “What did you give me them for?  To make my fortune in?”

“To learn common-sense in.”

Keith laughed.  “It wasn’t enough for that.  You should have given me three hundred, at the very least!”

The laugh was discouraging, and Isaac felt that he was on the wrong tack.

“I’d give you as many as you like, if I could afford to wait.  But I consider I’ve waited long enough already.”

“What were you waiting for?”

“For you to come back—­”

Keith’s face was radiant with innocent inquiry.

“—­To come back into the business.”

The light of innocence died out of the face as suddenly as it had kindled.

“My dear father, I shall never come back.  I thought I’d made that very clear to you.”

“You never made it clear—­your behaviour to me.  Not but what I ’ad an idea, which perhaps I need not name.  I’ve never asked what there was at the bottom of that foolish business, and I’ve never blamed you for it.  If it made you act badly to me, I’ve reason to believe it kept you out of worse mischief.”

Keith felt a queer tightening at the heart.  He understood that his father was referring darkly to Lucia Harden.  He was surprised to find that even this remote and shadowy allusion was more than he could bear.  He must call him off that trail; and the best way of doing it was to announce his engagement.

“As you seem to be rather mixed, father, I ought to tell you that I’m engaged to be married.  Have been for the last eighteen months.”

“Married?” Isaac’s face was tense with anxiety; for he could not tell what this news meant for him; whether it would remove his son farther from him, or bring him, beyond all expectation, near.

“May I ask who the lady is?  Any of your fine friends in Devonshire?”

Keith was silent, tongue-tied with presentiment of the coming blow.  It came.

“I needn’t ask.  It’s that—­that Miss ’Arden. I’ve heard of her.”

“As it happens it’s somebody you haven’t heard of.  You may have seen her, though—­Miss Flossie Walker.”

“No.  I’ve never seen her, not to my knowledge.  How long have you known her?”

“Ever since I came here.  She’s one of the boarders.”

“Ah-h.  Has she any means?”

“None.”

Isaac’s heart leapt high.

“Aren’t you going to congratulate me?”

“How can I, when I haven’t seen the lady?”

“You would, if you had seen her.”

“And when is it to be?  Like most young people, you’re a bit impatient, I suppose?”

Keith betrayed the extremity of his impatience by a painful flush.  This subject of his marriage was not to be approached without a certain shame.

“I suppose so; and like most young people we shall have to wait.”

Isaac’s eyes narrowed and blinked in the manner of a man uncertain of his focus; as it happened, he was just beginning to see.