“Are you engaged to Miss Vanstone?” he asked, suddenly.

“No, sir,” replied George.  “I thought it due to your uniform kindness to me to speak to you on the subject first.”

“Much obliged, I’m sure.  And you have put off speaking to me to the last moment, just as you put off everything else.  Do you think Miss Vanstone will say yes when you ask her?”

George hesitated.

“The devil take your modesty!” shouted the admiral.  “This is not a time for modesty; this is a time for speaking out.  Will she or won’t she?”

“I think she will, sir.”

The admiral laughed sardonically, and took another turn in the room.  He suddenly stopped, put his hands in his pockets, and stood still in a corner, deep in thought.  After an interval of a few minutes, his face cleared a little; it brightened with the dawning of a new idea.  He walked round briskly to George’s side of the fire, and laid his hand kindly on his nephew’s shoulder.

“You’re wrong, George,” he said; “but it is too late now to set you right.  On the sixteenth of next month the Banns must be put up in Ossory church, or you will lose the money.  Have you told Miss Vanstone the position you stand in?  Or have you put that off to the eleventh hour, like everything else?”

“The position is so extraordinary, sir, and it might lead to so much misapprehension of my motives, that I have felt unwilling to allude to it.  I hardly know how I can tell her of it at all.”

“Try the experiment of telling her friends.  Let them know it’s a question of money, and they will overcome her scruples, if you can’t.  But that is not what I had to say to you.  How long do you propose stopping here this time?”

“I thought of staying a few days, and then—­”

“And then of going back to London and making your offer, I suppose?  Will a week give you time enough to pick your opportunity with Miss Vanstone—­a week out of the fortnight or so that you have to spare?”

“I will stay here a week, admiral, with pleasure, if you wish it.”

“I don’t wish it.  I want you to pack up your traps and be off to-morrow.”

George looked at his uncle in silent astonishment.

“You found some letters waiting for you when you got here,” proceeded the admiral.  “Was one of those letters from my old friend, Sir Franklin Brock?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was it an invitation to you to go and stay at the Grange?”

“Yes, sir.”

“To go at once?”

“At once, if I could manage it.”

“Very good.  I want you to manage it; I want you to start for the Grange to-morrow.”

George looked back at the fire, and sighed impatiently.

“I understand you now, admiral,” he said.  “You are entirely mistaken in me.  My attachment to Miss Vanstone is not to be shaken in that manner.”

Admiral Bartram took his quarter-deck walk again, up and down the room.