ransacted affairs with my son. I will now try to
do the same with my daughter. A few moments with you in the
council-chamber, please. Oswald also, if you like."

Sissie smiled kindly at her awaiting spouse.

"Perhaps I'd better deal with my own father alone, darling."

Ozzie accepted the decision.

"Look here. I think I must be off," Charlie put in. "I've got a lot of
work to do."

"I expect you have," Mr. Prohack concurred. "By the way, you might meet
me at Smathe and Smathe's at ten fifteen in the morning."

Charlie nodded and slipped away.

"Infant," said Mr. Prohack to the defiantly smiling bride who awaited
him in the council chamber. "Has your mother said anything to you about
our wedding present?"

"No, dad."

"No, of course she hasn't. And do you know why? Because she daren't!
With your infernal independence you've frightened the life out of the
poor lady; that's what you've done. Your mother will doubtless have a
talk with me to-night. And to-morrow she will tell you what she has
decided to give you. Please let there be no nonsense. Whatever the gift
is, I shall be obliged if you will accept it--and use it, without
troubling us with any of your theories about the proper conduct of life.
Wisdom and righteousness existed before you, and there's just a chance
that they'll exist after you. Do you take me?"

"Quite, father."

"Good. You may become a great girl yet. We are now going home. Thanks
for a very pleasant evening."

In the car, beautifully alone with Eve, who was in a restful mood, Mr.
Prohack said:

"I shall be very ill in a few hours. Pate de foi gras is the devil, but
caviare is Beelzebub himself."

Eve merely gazed at him in gentle, hopeless reproach. He prophesied
truly. He was very ill. And yet through the succeeding crises he kept
smiling, sardonically.

"When I think," he murmured once with grimness, "that that fellow
Bishop had the impudence to ask us to lunch--and Charlie too! Charlie
too!" Eve, attendant, enquired sadly what he was talking about.

"Nothing, nothing," said he. "My mind is wandering. Let it."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE YACHT

I

Mr. Prohack was lounging over his breakfast in the original old house in
the Square behind Hyde Park. He came to be there because that same house
had been his wedding present to Sissie, who now occupied it with her
spouse, and because the noble mansion in Manchester Square was being
re-decorated (under compulsion of some clause