“Well, not exactly that.  I don’t suppose she was confused.”

“I should say not.  My idea is that you haven’t a ghost of chance, and that as you haven’t done anything all this time, you need not trouble yourself now.”

“But I have done something,” said Archie, thinking of his seventy pounds.

“You may as well give it up, for she means to marry Harry.”

“No!”

“But I tell you she does.  While you’ve been thinking he’s been doing.  From what I hear, he may have her to-morrow for the asking.”

“But he’s engaged to that girl whom they had with them down at the rectory,” said Archie, in a tone which showed with what horror he should regard any inconstancy toward Florence Burton on the part of Harry Clavering.

“What does that matter?  You don’t suppose he’ll let seven thousand a year slip through his fingers because he had promised to marry a little girl like her?  If her people choose to proceed against him, they’ll make him pay swinging damages; that is all.”

Archie did not like this idea at all, and became more than ever intent on his own matrimonial prospects.  He almost thought that he had a right to Lady Ongar’s money, and he certainly did think that a monstrous injustice was done to him by this idea of a marriage between her and his cousin.  “I mean to ask her as I’ve gone so far, certainly,” said he.

“You can do as you like about that.”

“Yes; of course I can do as I like; but when a fellow has gone in for a thing, he likes to see it through.”  He was still thinking of the seventy pounds which he had invested, and which he could now recover only out of Lady Ongar’s pocket.

“And you mean to say that you won’t come to Norway?”

“Well; if she accepts me—­”

“If she accepts you,” said Hugh, “of course you can’t come; but supposing she don’t?”

“In that case, I might as well do that as anything else,” said Archie.  Whereupon Sir Hugh signified to Jack Stuart that Archie would join the party, and went down to Clavering with no misgiving on that head.

Some few days after this there was another little dinner at the military club, to which no one was admitted but Archie and his friend Doodles.  Whenever these prandial consultations were held, Archie paid the bill.  There were no spoken terms to that effect, but the regulation seemed to come naturally to both of them.  Why should Doodles be taken from his billiards half-an-hour earlier than usual, and devote a portion of the calculating powers of his brain to Archie’s service without compensation?  And a richer vintage was needed when so much thought was required, the burden of which Archie would not of course allow to fall on his friend’s shoulders.  Were not this explained, the experienced reader would regard the devoted friendship of Doodles as exaggerated.

“I certainly shall ask her to-morrow,” said Archie, looking with a thoughtful cast of countenance through the club window into the street.  “It may be hurrying the matter a little, but I can’t help that.”  He spoke in a somewhat boastful tone, as though he were proud of himself and had forgotten that he had said the same words once or twice before.