“I shouldn’t interfere with what suited him better, in any case.  By the way, how did you like the Louisiana?”

Davenant’s jaw dropped.  His blue eyes were wide with amazement.  It was Olivia who undertook to speak, with a little air of surprise that Ashley should make such an odd mistake.

“Mr. Davenant wasn’t on the Louisiana.  It was Aunt Vic.  Mr. Davenant has just come from the West.  You do that by train.”

“Of course he was on the Louisiana.  Landed on the—­let me see!—­she sailed again yesterday!—­landed on the 20th, didn’t you?”

“No, no,” Olivia corrected again, smiling.  “That was the day Aunt Vic landed.  You’re getting every one mixed.”

“But they came together,” Ashley persisted.  “He brought her.  Didn’t you?”

The look on Olivia’s face frightened Davenant.  He got up and stood apologetically behind his chair.  “You’ll have to forgive me, Miss Guion,” he stammered.  “I—­I deceived you.  I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

She leaned forward, looking up at him.  “But I don’t know what you did, as it is.  I can’t understand—­what—­what any one is saying.”

“Then I’ll tell you, by Jove!  All the time you thought he was out there at Michigan he was over in France, following up the Marquise.  Tracked her like a bloodhound, what?  Told her the whole story—­how we’d got to a deadlock—­and everything.  Made her think that unless she came and bailed us out we’d be caught there for the rest of our lives.”

Olivia’s eyes were still lifted to Davenant’s.  “Is that true?”

“It’s true, by Jove!—­true as you live.  What’s more, he cracked me up as though I was the only man alive—­said that when it came to a question of who was worthy—­worthy to marry you—­he wasn’t fit to black my boots.”

“No,” Davenant cried, fiercely.  “There was no question of me.”

“Bosh!  Bosh, my good fellow!  When a man does what you’ve done there’s no question of any one but him.”

The color was hot in Davenant’s cheeks, but he himself could not have told whether it came from astonishment or anger.  “Since Colonel Ashley knows so well what happened, I shall leave him to tell it.”

He was about to make his escape, when Olivia stopped him.  “No, no.  Wait—­please wait.  Tell me why you did it.”

“I’ll tell you,” Ashley broke in.  He spoke with a kind of nervous jauntiness.  “I’ll tell you, by Jove!  We had a row.  I called him a cad.  I called him a damned cad.  There was a damned cad present on that occasion—­only—­I didn’t hit the right nail on the head.  But that’s not what I’m coming to.  He struck me.  He struck me right in the teeth, by Jove!  And when a man strikes you, it’s an insult that can only be wiped out by blood.  Very well; he’s offered it—­his blood.  He didn’t wait for me to draw it.  I suppose he thought I wouldn’t go in for the heroic.  So of his own accord he went over there to France and shed his heart’s blood, in the hope that I might overlook his offence.  All right, old chap; I overlook it.”