“I have been in the garden,” said Rand.  He hesitated, standing by the table.  There was a debate in his mind.  “Should I speak to him, too?  What is the use?  He’ll be no kinder to her!” He put out his hand uncertainly, and touched one of the Major’s cards.  “Is it an interesting game?”

“I find it so,” answered the other dryly.  “Else I should not play it.”

“Why do you like it?  It is poor amusement to play against yourself.”

“I like it, sir,” snapped the Major, “because I am assured of playing against a gentleman.”

Rand let his hand fall from the table.  “Major Churchill, I am leaving Fontenoy immediately.  Perhaps I ought to tell you what I have just told your brother:  I love Miss Churchill—­”

The Major rose from his chair.  “Have you spoken to her?”

“Yes, I have asked her to marry me.”

“Indeed!” said the Major huskily.  “May I ask what Miss Churchill replied?”

“Miss Churchill loves me,” answered Rand.  “She will do what I wish.”

The silence grew painful.  The words, acid and intolerable, that Rand expected, did not seem to come easily to the Major’s dry lips.  He looked small, thin, and frozen, grey and drawn of face, as though the basilisk had confronted him.  When at last he spoke, it was in a curiously remote voice, lucid and emotionless.  “Well, why not?  All beliefs die—­die and rot!  A vain show—­and this, too, was of the charnel!”

He turned upon Rand as if he would have struck him, then drew back, made in the air an abrupt and threatening gesture, and with a sound like a stifled cry passed the other and entered the house.  Rand heard him go down the hall, and the closing of the library door.

The young man’s heart was hot and sore.  He went up to the blue room, where he found Joab packing his portmanteau.  A few peremptory words sent the man to the stables, while his master with rapid fingers collected and laid together the papers with which the room was strewn.  The task finished, he threw himself for a moment into the great chair and looked about him.  He was capable of great attachment to place, and he had loved this room.  Now the mandarin smiled obliquely on him, and the moon-clock ticked the passing moments, the impossible blue roses flowered on thornless stems, and the picture of Washington looked calmly down from the opposite wall.  He put his hand over his eyes, and sat still, trying to calm the storm within him.  There were in his mind joy and gratitude, hurt pride and bitter indignation, and a thousand whirling thoughts as to ways and means, the overcoming of obstacles, and the building of a palace fit to shelter his happiness.  The clock struck, and he started up.  Not for much would he have overstayed his hour.