to ask
the old gentleman's advice. He had reason to believe that Sir Adam had
been in worse scrapes than this when he had been a young man, and
somehow or other nobody had ever thought the worse of him. He was sure
to be in his room at that hour, writing letters. Brook knocked and went
in. It was about eleven o'clock.

Sir Adam, gaunt and grey, and clad in a cashmere dressing-jacket, was
extended upon all the chairs which the little cell-like room contained,
close by the open window. He had a very thick cigarette between his
lips, and a half-emptied glass of brandy and soda stood on the corner of
a table at his elbow. He had not failed to drink one brandy and soda
every morning at eleven o'clock for at least a quarter of a century.

His keen old eyes turned sharply to Brook as the latter entered, and a
smile lighted up his furrowed face, but instantly disappeared again; for
the young man's features betrayed something of what he had gone through
during the last hour.

"Anything wrong, boy?" asked Sir Adam quickly. "Have a brandy and soda
and a pipe with me. Oh, letters! It's devilish hard that the post should
find a man out in this place! Leave them there on the table."

Brook relighted his pipe. His father took one leg from one of the
chairs, which he pushed towards his son with his foot by way of an
invitation to sit down.

"What's the matter?" he asked, renewing his question. "You've got into
another scrape, have you? Mrs. Crosby--of all women in the world. Your
mother told me that ridiculous story. Wants to divorce Crosby and marry
you, does she? I say, boy, it's time this sort of nonsense stopped, you
know. One of these days you'll be caught. There are cleverer women in
the world than Mrs. Crosby."

"Oh! she's not clever," answered Brook thoughtfully.

"Well, what's the foundation of the story? What the dickens did you go
with those people for, when you found out that she was coming? You knew
the sort of woman she was, I suppose? What happened? You made love to
her, of course. That was what she wanted. Then she talked of eternal
bliss together, and that sort of rot, didn't she? And you couldn't
exactly say that you only went in for bliss by the month, could you? And
she said, 'By Jove, as you don't refuse, you shall have it for the rest
of your life,' and she said to herself that you were richer than Crosby,
and a good deal younger, and better-looking, and better socially, and
that if you were going to make