“You are fortunate,” she remarked, “to have an appreciative uncle.”

“He is rather a brick,” Granet acknowledged.  “He’s done me awfully well all my life.”

She nodded.

“You really are rather to be envied, aren’t you, Captain Granet?  You have most of the things a man wants.  You’ve had your opportunity, too of doing just the finest things a man can, and you’ve done them.”

He looked gloomily out seawards.

“I am lucky in one way,” he admitted.  “In others I am not so sure.”

She kept her head turned from him.  Somehow or other, she divined quite well what was in his mind.  She tried to think of something to say, something to dispel the seriousness which she felt to be in the atmosphere, but words failed her.  It was he who broke the silence.

“May I ask you a question, Miss Conyers?”

“A question?  Why not?”

“Are you really engaged to Major Thomson?”

She did not answer him at once.  She still kept her eyes resolutely turned away from his.  When at last she spoke, her voice was scarcely raised above a whisper.

“Certainly I am,” she assented.

He leaned a little closer towards her.  His voice sounded to her very deep and firm.  It was the voice of a man immensely in earnest.

“I am going to be an awful rotter,” he said.  “I suppose I ought to take your answer to my question as final.  I won’t that’s all.  He came along first but that isn’t everything.  It’s a fair fight between him and me.  He hates me and takes no pains to hide it.  He hates me because I care for you—­you know that.  I couldn’t keep it to myself even if I would.”

She drew a little away but he forced her to look at him.  There was something else besides appeal in her eyes.

“You’ve been the victim of a mistake,” he insisted, his hand resting upon hers.  “I don’t believe that you really care for him at all.  He doesn’t seem the right sort for you, he’s so much older and graver.  You mustn’t be angry.  You must forgive me, please, if I have said more than I ought—­if I say more now—­because I am going to tell you, now that we are alone together for a moment, that I love you.”

She turned upon him a little indignantly, though the distress in her face was still apparent.

“Captain Granet!” she exclaimed.  “You should not say that!  You have no right—­no right at all.”

“On the contrary, I have every right,” he answered doggedly.  “It isn’t as though Thomson were my friend.  He hates me and I dislike him.  Every man has a right to do his best to win the girl he cares for.  It’s the first time I’ve felt anything of this sort.  I’ve never wanted the big things before from any woman.  And now—­”

She turned impetuously away from him.  Over their head an electric message was sparkling and crackling.  She stood looking up, her hand outstretched as though to keep him away.