pared--will you stay here for a bit and
help me to settle things? There is so much to do, and it is my duty to
attend to everything myself. There are the lawyers and people, of
course--everybody is so kind--but I want a man of my own beside me."

"Certainly, Deb," he replied, without wincing; "for as long as you want
me--if I can run home every other day or so for a look round."

He stayed, in company with his mother, for a month; then, when he went
to live at home again, he spent at least half his days at Redford,
acting as Deb's 'own man' indoors and out--her real legal adviser, her
real station manager, her confidential major-domo, the doer of all the
'dirty work' connected with the administration of her estate; and
never--although she exposed him to almost every sort of
temptation--never once stepped off the line that he had marked for
himself.

Another person was not so scrupulous, though, to be sure, he was not so
poor.

Claud Dalzell, drifting from one resort of the wealthy to
another--deer-stalking in Scotland, salmon-fishing in Norway, shooting
in the Rockies, hunting in the Shires, yachting everywhere, and
everywhere adored of a crowd of women as idle as himself--was loafing
at Monte Carlo when he heard of Mr Thornycroft's death and Deb's
accession to his throne. Ennui and satiety possessed the popular young
man at the moment--for he was made for better things, and his
dissatisfied soul tormented him; and a vision of old-time Redford and
the beautiful girl who was like wine and fire, a blend of passion and
purity that now impressed him as unique, rose before his mental eyes
with the effect of water-springs in a dry land. His thoughts went back
to the days when they rode and made love together--the sunny days,
before the clouds gathered. It was that past which glorified her all at
once, not the present--not Mr Thornycroft's money--not the halo of
elegance and consequence that again adorned her; he never suspected
otherwise for a moment. And that was why he did not hesitate to book a
passage to Australia that very day.

Deb was at Redford when he arrived. That she would never part with the
place again, she had declared on the day that it came into her
possession, and she was now establishing herself there, she said, for
life. She had gone through the whole great rambling house, sorting and
rearranging the furniture that was in it, adding the cream of the
contents of the best shops in town. She made a clean