“Just so.  I suppose Miss O’Hara can wait.”

Fred Neville scratched his head.  “Oh yes;—­she can wait.  There’s nothing to bind me to a day or a month.  But my uncle may live for the next ten years now.”

“My advice to you is to let Miss O’Hara understand clearly that you will make no other engagement, but that you cannot marry her as long as your uncle lives.  Of course I say this on the supposition that the affair cannot be broken off.”

“Certainly not,” said Fred with a decision that was magnanimous.

“I cannot think the engagement a fortunate one for you in your position.  Like should marry like.  I’m quite sure of that.  You would wish your wife to be easily intimate with the sort of people among whom she would naturally be thrown as Lady Scroope,—­among the wives and daughters of other Earls and such like.”

“No; I shouldn’t.”

“I don’t see how she would be comfortable in any other way.”

“I should never live among other Earls, as you call them.  I hate that kind of thing.  I hate London.  I should never live here.”

“What would you do?”

“I should have a yacht, and live chiefly in that.  I should go about a good deal, and get into all manner of queer places.  I don’t say but what I might spend a winter now and then in Leicestershire or Northamptonshire, for I am fond of hunting.  But I should have no regular home.  According to my scheme you should have this place,—­and sufficient of the income to maintain it of course.”

“That wouldn’t do, Fred,” said Jack, shaking his head,—­“though I know how generous you are.”

“Why wouldn’t it do?”

“You are the heir, and you must take the duties with the privileges.  You can have your yacht if you like a yacht,—­but you’ll soon get tired of that kind of life.  I take it that a yacht is a bad place for a nursery, and inconvenient for one’s old boots.  When a man has a home fixed for him by circumstances,—­as you will have,—­he gravitates towards it, let his own supposed predilections be what they may.  Circumstances are stronger than predilections.”

“You’re a philosopher.”

“I was always more sober than you, Fred.”

“I wish you had been the elder,—­on the condition of the younger brother having a tidy slice out of the property to make himself comfortable.”

“But I am not the elder, and you must take the position with all the encumbrances.  I see nothing for it but to ask Miss O’Hara to wait.  If my uncle lives long the probability is that one or the other of you will change your minds, and that the affair will never come off.”