She sprang to her feet, her little figure looking slim and girlish.

“I can’t leave you out, Peter, when you’re the Hamlet of the piece.  That’s nonsense.  I’m not plotting or planning on any one’s behalf.  It isn’t my temperament.  I only say that if this—­this affair—­didn’t come off—­though I suppose it will—­I feel sure it will—­yet if it didn’t—­then, with all your advantages—­and after what you’ve done for her—­”

He strode forward, almost upsetting the tea-table beside which she stood.  “Look here, Drusilla.  You may as well understand me once for all.  I wouldn’t marry a girl who took me because of what I’d done for her, not if she was the last woman in the world.”

“But you would if she was the first, Peter.  And I’m convinced that for you she is the first—­”

“Now, now!” he warned her, “that’ll do!  I’ve been generous enough not to say anything as to who’s first with you, though you don’t take much pains to hide it.  Why not—?”

“You’re all first with me,” she protested.  “I don’t know which of you I’m the most sorry for.”

“Don’t waste your pity on me.  I’m perfectly happy.  There’s only one of the lot who needs any consideration whatever.  And, by God! if he’s not true to her, I’ll—­”

“Your intervention won’t be called for, Peter,” she assured him, making her way toward the door.  “You’re greatly mistaken if you think I’ve asked for it.”

“Then for Heaven’s sake what have you asked for? I don’t see.”

She was in the hall, but she turned and spoke through the doorway.  “I’ve only asked you not to be an idiot.  I merely beg, for all our sakes, that if something precious is flung down at your feet you’ll have the common sense to stoop and pick it up.”

“I’ll consider that,” he called after her, as she sped up the stairs, “when I see it lying there.”

XII

It may be admitted at once that, on arriving at Tory Hill and hearing from Olivia’s lips the tale of her father’s downfall, Colonel Rupert Ashley received the first perceptible check in a very distinguished career.  Up to this point the sobriquet of “Lucky Ashley,” by which he was often spoken of in the Rangers, had been justified by more than one spectacular success.  He had fulfilled so many special missions to uncivilized and half-civilized and queerly civilized tribes that he had come to feel as if he habitually went on his way with the might of the British Empire to back him.  It was he who in South Africa brought the M’popos to order without shedding a drop of blood; it was he who in the eastern Soudan induced the followers of the Black Prophet to throw in their lot with the English, securing by this move the safety of Upper Egypt; it was he who in the Malay Peninsula intimidated the Sultan of Surak into accepting the British protectorate, thus removing a menace to the peace of the Straits Settlements.  Even if he had