“Well, if you do, Trixie, I give you fair warning that I shall empty over you the largest jug of water I can find!” responded her brother with unimpaired cordiality. “Now, don’t be such a goose, my dear! You are putting poor Warren to the blush.”

She sprang up, and grasped the lapels of his exquisitely cut coat of blue superfine, giving him a shake, and looking up into his smiling eyes with the tears still drowning her own. “Gary, you do not love her, nor she you! I have never seen the least sign that she regards you even with partiality. Only tell me what she has to offer you!”

His hands came up to cover hers, removing them from his lapels, and holding them in a strong clasp. “I love you dearly, Trixie, but I can’t permit you to crumple this coat, you know. Weston made it for me: one of his triumphs, don’t you think?” He hesitated, seeing that she was not to be diverted; and then said, slightly pressing her hands: “Don’t you understand? I had thought that you would. You have told me so many times that it is my duty to marry—and, indeed, I know it is, if the name is not to die with me, which I think would be a pity. If Arthur were alive—but since Salamanca I’ve known that I can’t continue all my days in single bliss. So—!”

“Yes, yes, but why this female, Gary?” she demanded. “She has nothing!”

“On the contrary, she has breeding, and good manners, and, as Warren has said, an amiable disposition. I hope I have as much to offer her, and I wish that I had more. But I have not.”

The tears sprang to her eyes again, and spilled over. “Oh, my dearest brother, still? It is more than seven years since—”

“Yes, more than seven years,” he interrupted. “Don’t cry, Trixie! I assure you I don’t grieve any longer, or even think of Clarissa, except now and then, when something occurs which perhaps brings her to my memory. But I have never fallen in love again. Not with any of the delightful girls you have been so obliging as to cast in my way! I believe I could never feel for another what I once felt for Clarissa, so it seems to me that to be making a bid for the sort of girl you would wish me to marry would be a shabby thing to do. I have a fortune large enough to make me an eligible suitor, and I daresay the Stockwells would give their consent, were I to offer for Miss Alice—”