“One good turn deserves another, George,” said the old gentleman.  “If I am willing to make concessions on my side, the least you can do is to meet me half-way, and make concessions on yours.”

“I don’t deny it, sir.”

“Very well.  Now listen to my proposal.  Give me a fair hearing, George—­a fair hearing is every man’s privilege.  I will be perfectly just to begin with.  I won’t attempt to deny that you honestly believe Miss Vanstone is the only woman in the world who can make you happy.  I don’t question that.  What I do question is, whether you really know your own mind in this matter quite so well as you think you know it yourself.  You can’t deny, George, that you have been in love with a good many women in your time?  Among the rest of them, you have been in love with Miss Brock.  No longer ago than this time last year there was a sneaking kindness between you and that young lady, to say the least of it.  And quite right, too!  Miss Brock is one of that round dozen of darlings I mentioned over our first glass of wine.”

“You are confusing an idle flirtation, sir, with a serious attachment,” said George.  “You are altogether mistaken—­you are, indeed.”

“Likely enough; I don’t pretend to be infallible—­I leave that to my juniors.  But I happen to have known you, George, since you were the height of my old telescope; and I want to have this serious attachment of yours put to the test.  If you can satisfy me that your whole heart and soul are as strongly set on Miss Vanstone as you suppose them to be, I must knock under to necessity, and keep my objections to myself.  But I must be satisfied first.  Go to the Grange to-morrow, and stay there a week in Miss Brock’s society.  Give that charming girl a fair chance of lighting up the old flame again if she can, and then come back to St. Crux, and let me hear the result.  If you tell me, as an honest man, that your attachment to Miss Vanstone still remains unshaken, you will have heard the last of my objections from that moment.  Whatever misgivings I may feel in my own mind, I will say nothing, and do nothing, adverse to your wishes.  There is my proposal.  I dare say it looks like an old man’s folly, in your eyes.  But the old man won’t trouble you much longer, George; and it may be a pleasant reflection, when you have got sons of your own, to remember that you humored him in his last days.”

He came back to the fire-place as he said those words, and laid his hand once more on his nephew’s shoulder.  George took the hand and pressed it affectionately.  In the tenderest and best sense of the word, his uncle had been a father to him.

“I will do what you ask me, sir,” he replied, “if you seriously wish it.  But it is only right to tell you that the experiment will be perfectly useless.  However, if you prefer my passing a week at the Grange to my passing it here, to the Grange I will go.”