imself
into creases, and give your name and say, 'No, there's no impediment,' and
put on the ring and pay a fee--I believe it was seven-and-six--and take a
blotchy certificate and walk out--married."

"It never does take long, by Gad!" agrees Captain Bingo with fervour, "to
do any of the things that can't be undone again."

"Undone ...!" Beauvayse sits up suddenly and turns his miserable,
beautiful, defiant eyes full on the large, perturbed face of his listener.
"Wrynche, Wrynche! I've felt I'd gladly give my soul to be able to undo
it, ever since I first set eyes on Lynette Mildare!"

Captain Bingo gives vent to another of his loud, dismal whistles. Then he
gets out of his chair, large, clumsy, irate, and begins:

"I might have known it, with a chap like you. Another woman's at the
bottom of all your bellowing. You're not a bit sick at having brought an
outsider--a rank outsider, by Gad!--into the family stud; you're not a rap
ashamed at havin' disappointed the old man's hopes of you, for you know as
well as I do that when you'd done sowin' your wild oats and had your
fling, you'd have come in when he rang the bell and married Lady Mary
Menzies. You're not a damned scrap sorry at having broken your mother's
heart, though you know in the bottom of your soul that she scented this
marriage in the wind, and had an interview with the Chief, and went down
on her knees to him--her knees, by the Living Tinker!--to give you the
chance of breakin' off an undesirable connection!"

Beauvayse is out of his chair now. "Is that true--about my mother?" he
demands, blazing.

"I'm not in the habit of lyin', Lord Beauvayse!" states Captain Bingo
huffily.

"Don't fly off like a lunatic, Bingo, old man. How did you
find--that--out?"

"Your cousin Townham told me."

"Damn my cousin Townham for a dried-up, wiggy, pratin' little
scandalmonger!"

Captain Bingo retorts irately:

"Damn him if you please; he's no friend of mine. As yours, what I ask you
is, between man and man, how far have you gone in this fresh affair?"

Beauvayse drives his hands deep into the pockets of his patched flannels,
and says, adjusting a footstool with his toe over a crack in the
board-flooring, as though the operation were a delicate one upon which
much depended:

"I've told her how I feel where she's concerned, and that I care for her
as I never cared yet, and never shall care, for anyone else."

The faint grin dawns again on Captain Wrynche's lar