“D-hang Jeremiah Pixley!”

“D-hang is not a nice expression to use before a lady, let me tell you.  What you have, as, I was saying, is just enough to make or mar you—­”

“It’s going to make me.  I can live on it till things begin to come my way.”

“Everyone writes nowadays,” she said, with a dubious shake of the head.  “Who reads all the books passes my comprehension.  I suppose you have all just to buy one another’s to make a bit of a living out of it.”

“Like those washing people!  But it’s not quite as bad as all that.  There are still some intelligent people who buy books—­good books, of course, I mean.”

“Not many, I’m afraid.  They read reviews and chatter as though they’d read the books.  And if they really want to read them they get them out of a library.  You don’t see bought books lying on the tables, as you used to do when I was a girl, and they were scarcer and dearer.  How is this last one going?”

“I have reason to believe my publishers are not absolutely broken-hearted over it, which leads me to think that they have probably done pretty well out of it.  They are not what you might call a gushing race, you know, but they have given me a kind of cautious half-hint that they might not refuse to look at my next if I offered it to them on my bended knees.  But let us get back to our—­to Miss Brandt.  I had no idea she was an heiress.  I have really never thought of money in the matter, except as to how I could earn enough to offer it to her.”

“She has a fair portion—­about two thousand a year, I believe.  Her father was Danish Consul in Glasgow, and had a shipping business there.  I should not be surprised if Mr. Pixley had views of his own concerning Margaret’s portion and his son—­and of course Margaret herself.”

“Will you permit me to say, ‘Hang Mr. Pixley!’ dear Lady Elspeth?  It would be such a relief—­if you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“You may say ‘Hang Mr. Pixley!’ though it is not an expression I am in the habit of using myself.  But please don’t begin it with a D.”

“Hang Mr. Pixley, and Mr. Pixley’s son, and all his intentions!” he said fervently and with visible relish.

“Yes,” she nodded slowly, as though savouring it; and then added, with a delicious twinkle of the soft brown eyes, “There is something in that that appeals to me.  Jeremiah Pixley is almost too good for this world.  At least—­”

“He is absolutely unwholesomely good.  My own private opinion is that he’s a disreputable old blackg—­I mean whited sepulchre.”

“Unwholesomely good!” She nodded again.  “Yes,—­that, I think, very fairly expresses him.  ‘Unco’ guid,’ we would say up north.  But, all the same, he is Margaret’s uncle and guardian and trustee.  He is also the kind of man whom nothing can turn from a line he has once adopted.”

“I know.  Pigheaded as a War-Office-mule,” he side-tracked hastily.