ock at Philip's door, and Philip's
sister was left behind to wonder nervously how Philip would behave and
what he would say. She was still smarting under the boy's furious
outburst of the night before when, through a calculated indiscretion of
Delaine's, the notion that Anderson had presumed and might still presume
to set his ambitions on Elizabeth had been presented to him for the
first time.

"My sister marry a mining engineer!--with a drunken old robber for a
father! By Jove! Anybody talking nonsense of that kind will jolly well
have to reckon with me! Elizabeth!--you may say what you like, but I am
the head of the family!"

Anderson found the head of the family in bed, surrounded by novels, and
a dozen books on big-game shooting in the Rockies. Philip received him
with an evident and ungracious embarrassment.

"I am awfully sorry--beastly business. Hard lines on you, of
course--very. Hope they'll get the men."

"Thank you. They are doing their best."

Anderson sat down beside the lad. The fragility of his look struck him
painfully, and the pathetic contrast between it and the fretting
spirit--the books of travel and adventure heaped round him.

"Have you been ill again?" he asked in his kind, deep voice.

"Oh, just a beastly chill. Elizabeth would make me take too many wraps.
Everyone knows you oughtn't to get overheated walking."

"Do you want to stay on here longer?"

"Not I! What do I care about glaciers and mountains and that sort of
stuff if I can't hunt? But Elizabeth's got at the doctor somehow, and he
won't let me go for three or four days unless I kick over the traces. I
daresay I shall."

"No you won't--for your sister's sake. I'll see all arrangements are
made."

Philip made no direct reply. He lay staring at the ceiling--till at last
he said--

"Delaine's going. He's going to-morrow. He gets on Elizabeth's nerves."

"Did he say anything to you about me?" said Anderson.

Philip flushed.

"Well, I daresay he did."

"Make your mind easy, Gaddesden. A man with my story is not going to ask
your sister to marry him."

Philip looked up. Anderson sat composedly erect, the traces of his
nights of sleeplessness and revolt marked on every feature, but as much
master of himself and his life--so Gaddesden intuitively felt--as he had
ever been. A movement of remorse and affection stirred in the young man
mingled with the strength of other inherited things.

"Awfully sorry, you know," he said cl