on his way to be cared for in baronial halls, would, he knew, have added a joy to the final moments of his grandmother, which the consolations of religion could scarcely have met equally in competition.  His own point of view, however, would not, it is true, have been that of the old woman in the black net cap and purple ribbons, but of a less reverent nature.  His enjoyment, in fact, would have been based upon that transatlantic sense of humour, whose soul is glee at the incompatible, which would have been full fed by the incongruity of “Little Willie being yanked along by a bunch of earls, and Reuben S. Vanderpoel’s daughters following the funeral.”  That he himself should have been unconscious of the situation seemed to him like “throwing away money.”

The doctor arriving after he had been put to bed found slight concussion of the brain and a broken leg.  With Lady Anstruthers’ kind permission, it would certainly be best that he should remain for the present where he was.  So, in a bedroom whose windows looked out upon spreading lawns and broad-branched trees, he was as comfortably established as was possible.  G. Selden, through the capricious intervention of Fate, if he had not “got next” to Reuben S. Vanderpoel himself, had most undisputably “got next” to his favourite daughter.

As the Dunholm carriage rolled down the avenue there reigned for a few minutes a reflective silence.  It was Lady Dunholm who broke it.  “That,” she said in her softly decided voice, “that is a nice girl.”

Lord Dunholm’s agreeable, humorous smile flickered into evidence.

“That is it,” he said.  “Thank you, Eleanor, for supplying me with a quite delightful early Victorian word.  I believe I wanted it.  She is a beauty and she is clever.  She is a number of other things—­but she is also a nice girl.  If you will allow me to say so, I have fallen in love with her.”

“If you will allow me to say so,” put in Westholt, “so have I—­quite fatally.”

“That,” said his father, with speculation in his eye, “is more serious.”

CHAPTER XXVI

“What it must be to you—­just you!”

G. Selden, awakening to consciousness two days later, lay and stared at the chintz covering of the top of his four-post bed through a few minutes of vacant amazement.  It was a four-post bed he was lying on, wasn’t it?  And his leg was bandaged and felt unmovable.  The last thing he remembered was going down an incline in a tree-bordered avenue.  There was nothing more.  He had been all right then.  Was this a four-post bed or was it not?  Yes, it was.  And was it part of the furnishings of a swell bedroom—­the kind of bedroom he had never been in before?  Tip top, in fact?  He stared and tried to recall things—­but could not, and in his bewilderment exclaimed aloud.

“Well,” he said, “if this ain’t the limit!  You may search me!”