dow. "All I suggest is, that since
Leo is still a child, and has not perhaps the strength to bear a heavy
heart strain as easily as a girl of Cleopatra's age, we should like any
attitude you choose to adopt towards her to be made perfectly plain from
the start. Do you understand, Denis? I don't wish to be unfriendly."

"I can assure you," protested Denis, who had been rendered none too
comfortable by the sting in Mrs. Delarayne's last remarks, "that all
along I have always been in deadly earnest, I have always----"

"Hush!" cried the masterful matron. "I don't want to hear now what your
sentiments are. All I want you to do is to be quite plain to my little
daughter. Do you want to become engaged to her, or not?"

"I do most earnestly," said the young man, "but----"

"But what?" growled Sir Joseph sternly.

"She now says she has no feeling whatever for me," Denis explained.

The baronet turned upon his secretary, scowled, and then regarded Mrs.
Delarayne in astonishment. "No feeling whatever?" he repeated.

"Has she actually told you this?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded with tell-tale
eagerness.

"Yes, this minute," Denis replied. "I can hardly believe it," he added
with the usual ingenuousness of all vain people. "I can only think that
a momentary infatuation for Lord Henry, who has spared no pains to----"

"Do you mean that you have asked her to marry you and she's refused?"
Sir Joseph enquired, observing the young man's painful discomfiture.

"Yes, this very minute."

"Quite positively?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded.

"As far as I can make out--yes," Denis replied. He was so completely
bewildered by the rebuff, that the incredulity of his two seniors made
it seem all the more impossible to him.

"'Pon my soul!" Sir Joseph exclaimed, utterly abashed.

He could get no further. The prospects of getting Mrs. Delarayne's
daughters married appeared to grow gloomier and gloomier.

"Then that's settled, you see, Sir Joseph," Mrs. Delarayne remarked. She
had been induced to have this interview with Denis against her will. Her
sister and the baronet had prevailed over her better judgment, and now
that she saw the issue of it was to be more satisfactory than she could
possibly have hoped, she had difficulty in concealing her pleasure.

At this point the report of a fire-arm made them all turn in the
direction of Sandlewood.

"They seem to have got a rabbit before reaching the woods," Sir Joseph
observed. "That sounded ex