Paul was commissioned by his mother to convey to Hamilton the news which would on the following day appear in all the society columns, the statement that in thirty days Miss Mary Burton would become the bride of Mr. Jefferson Edwardes, head of Edwardes and Edwardes.  At first Hamilton said nothing.  His face paled a little and he reached out and fingered a paper-weight and a pen, with the gesture of one whose brain takes no thought of what his hand does.

Then slowly his eyes kindled into the tawny gleam of a tigerish light.

“It was very good of them to wait so long,” he said significantly.  “I think I am just about ready now.”

“What do you mean, Hamilton?” Paul bent forward and spoke with alarm.

“Mean!” Hamilton came to his feet and his anger snapped across the table like a powerful current leaping a broken wire.  He took up a delicately fashioned statuette of porcelain and tossed it to the stone flagging of the hearth where it lay shivered.  He walked over and contemptuously kicked some of the fragments toward the open fire.

“Mean!  I mean that I shall treat him like that.  What’s left when I’m through Mary can have—­for a wedding or a funeral whichever seems most suitable.”

For once in his life a flame of resistance and momentary courage leaped up in Paul Burton.

“You shall do nothing of the sort,” he vehemently declared.  “Mary is my blood and your blood and my mother’s blood.  You sha’n’t sacrifice her, merely because she loves a man whom you hate.”

“Stop!” Hamilton raised his hands warningly.  “Don’t throw yourself to the enemy, Paul.  Don’t make an irreconcilable breach between us.  I don’t find fault with your sympathy.  I should hate you if you didn’t feel it—­but this man Edwardes is doomed.  Nothing can save him.  If heaven itself fought for him, I would make war on heaven, whoever attempts to thwart me—­even if it be you, Paul, shall go with him to ruin.  We won’t talk of this again.”

* * * * *

Mary Burton awoke one morning to see, through her window blinds, a mixture of snow and rain falling from low-hanging clouds; yet her lips parted in a smile.  She glanced at the clock by her bed.  It was eleven.  In just one week and sixty minutes she and Jefferson Edwardes would be standing at the altar.

She threw a dressing-gown about her, and, slipping her small pink feet into small pink slippers, crossed idly to the window.  Then with a face that in an instant went white with a premonition of disaster, she wheeled on Julie and her voice came in an agitated whisper.