Mount Dunstan was in the library.  He had sat smoking his pipe while he watched the purple cloud roll up and spread itself, blotting out the chrysoprase and pink and blue, and when the branches of the trees began to toss about he had looked on with pleasure as the rush of big rain drops came down and pelted things.  It was a fine storm, and there were some imposing claps of thunder and jagged flashes of lightning.  As one splendid rattle shook the air he was surprised to hear a summons at the great hall door.  Who on earth could be turning up at this time?  His man Reeve announced the arrival a few moments later, and it was Sir Nigel Anstruthers.  He had, he explained, been riding through the village when the deluge descended, and it had occurred to him to turn in at the park gates and ask a temporary shelter.  Mount Dunstan received him with sufficient courtesy.  His appearance was not a thing to rejoice over, but it could be endured.  Whisky and soda and a smoke would serve to pass the hour, if the storm lasted so long.

Conversation was not the easiest thing in the world under the circumstances, but Sir Nigel led the way steadily after he had taken his seat and accepted the hospitalities offered.  What a place it was—­this!  He had been struck for the hundredth time with the impressiveness of the mass of it, the sweep of the park and the splendid grouping of the timber, as he had ridden up the avenue.  There was no other place like it in the county.  Was there another like it in England?

“Not in its case, I hope,” Mount Dunstan said.

There were a few seconds of silence.  The rain poured down in splashing sheets and was swept in rattling gusts against the window panes.

“What the place needs is—­an heiress,” Anstruthers observed in the tone of a practical man.  “I believe I have heard that your views of things are such that she should preferably not be an American.”

Mount Dunstan did not smile, though he slightly showed his teeth.

“When I am driven to the wall,” he answered, “I may not be fastidious as to nationality.”

Nigel Anstruthers’ manner was not a bad one.  He chose that tone of casual openness which, while it does not wholly commit itself, may be regarded as suggestive of the amiable half confidence of speeches made as “man to man.”

“My own opportunity of studying the genus American heiress within my own gates is a first-class one.  I find that it knows what it wants and that its intention is to get it.”  A short laugh broke from him as he flicked the ash from his cigar on to the small bronze receptacle at his elbow.  “It is not many years since it would have been difficult for a girl to be frank enough to say, ’When I marry I shall ask something in exchange for what I have to give.’”

“There are not many who have as much to give,” said Mount Dunstan coolly.

“True,” with a slight shrug.  “You are thinking that men are glad enough to take a girl like that—­even one who has not a shape like Diana’s and eyes like the sea.  Yes, by George,” softly, and narrowing his lids, “she is a handsome creature.”