ht to have. I so want him to have the best. I so want him to
be happy."

The words were out with a rush, almost before she was aware of uttering
them, and suddenly her eyes were full of tears, tears that caught her off
her guard, so that she had neither time nor strength to check them. She
turned quickly from him, fighting for self-control.

Sir Beverley uttered a grunt that might have denoted either surprise or
disgust, and there followed a silence that she found peculiarly
difficult to bear.

"So," he said at last, in a tone that was strictly devoid of feeling,
"you care for him too much to marry him? Is that it?"

It sounded preposterous, but she was still too near tears for any sense
of humour to penetrate her distress. She felt as if he had remorselessly
wrested from her and dragged to light a treasure upon which she herself
had scarcely dared to look. She continued feverishly to pluck the pale
flowers that grew all about them, her eyes fixed upon her task.

With a growling effort, Sir Beverley raised himself, thrust forward a
quivering hand and gripped hers.

Startled, she turned towards him, meeting not hostility but a certain
grim kindliness in the hard old eyes.

"Will you honour me with your attention for a moment?" he asked, with
ironical courtesy.

"I am attending," she answered meekly.

"Then," he said, dropping all pretence at courtesy without further
ceremony, "permit me to say that if you don't marry my grandson, you'll
be a bigger fool than I take you for. And in my opinion, a sober-minded
woman like you who will see to his comfort and be faithful to him is more
likely to make him happy than any of your headlong, flighty girls."

He stopped; but he did not relinquish his hold upon her. There was
to Avery something oddly pathetic in the close grasp of those
unsteady fingers. It was as if they made an appeal which he would
have scorned to utter.

"You really wish me to marry him?" she said.

He snarled at her like a surly dog. "Wish it? I! Good Heavens above, if
I had my way I'd never let him marry at all! But unfortunately
circumstances demand it; and the boy himself--the boy himself, well--"
his voice softened imperceptibly, rasped on a note of tenderness, "he
wants looking after; he's young, you know. He'll be all alone very
soon, and--it isn't considered good for a man to live alone--not a young
man anyway."

He broke off, still looking hard at Avery from under his drawn white
brows a