“Entirely,” Francis replied.  “Here is the exact truth, so far as I am concerned.  I met your daughter little more than an hour ago, coming out of a steamship office, where she had booked a passage to Buenos Ayres to get away from me.  I was fortunate enough to induce her to change her mind.  She has consented instead to remain in England as my wife.  We were, as you see, celebrating the occasion.”

Sir Timothy laid his hat upon the sideboard and slowly removed his gloves.

“I trust,” he said, “that this pint bottle does not represent your cellar.  I will drink a glass of wine with you, and with your permission make myself a pate sandwich.  I was just sitting down to luncheon when I received the information which brought me here.”

Francis produced another bottle of wine from the sideboard and filled his visitor’s glass.

“You will drink, I hope, to our happiness,” he said.

“I shall do nothing of the sort,” Sir Timothy declared, helping himself with care to the pate.  “I have no superstitions about breaking bread with an enemy, or I should not have asked you to visit me at The Sanctuary, Mr. Ledsam.  I object to your marriage with my daughter, and I shall take what steps I can to prevent it.”

“Why?”

Sir Timothy did not at once reply.  He seemed to be enjoying his sandwich; he also appreciated the flavour of his wine.

“Your question,” he said, “strikes me as being a little ingenuous.  You are at the present moment suspecting me of crimes beyond number.  You encourage Scotland Yard detectives to make asses of themselves in my stream.  Your myrmidons scramble on to the top of my walls and try to bribe my servants to disclose the mysteries of my household.  You have accepted to the fullest extent my volunteered statement that I am a patron of crime.  You are, in short—­forgive me if I help myself to a little more of this pate—­engaged in a strenuous attempt to bring me to justice.”

“None of these things affects your daughter,” Francis pointed out.

“Pardon me,” Sir Timothy objected.  “You are a great and shining light of the English law.  People speak of you as a future Chancellor.  How can you contemplate an alliance with the widow of one criminal and the daughter of another?”

“As to Margaret being Oliver Hilditch’s widow,” Francis replied, “you were responsible for that, and no one else.  He was your protege; you gave your consent to the marriage.  As to your being her father, that again is not Margaret’s fault.  I should marry her if Oliver Hilditch had been three times the villain he was, and if you were the Devil himself.”

“I am getting quite to like you, Mr. Ledsam,” Sir Timothy declared, helping himself to another piece of toast and commencing to butter it.  “Margaret, what have you to say about all this?”