"Knights errant always are. I've always suspected that St. George was jealous of the dragon."

Nevertheless, while Sir Joseph's slow brain was working this out, she snatched a moment to ponder how her noble young friend could possibly have found it necessary to go to such unexpected extremes.

"Don't be unfair, Edith," Sir Joseph objected. "Denis was quite right to tell us. Lord Henry is much too old to kiss a child like Leonetta."

"You mean he is just old enough."

The baronet waved his hands in a mystified manner before him. "I cannot understand you," he replied.

It was at this point that Denis burst in upon them.

"I beg your pardon," he said, "you wanted to discuss something with me, I believe," he added, addressing Sir Joseph.

"Yes, we did,--that is to say, Mrs. Delarayne," stammered the baronet.

He was always a little uncomfortable when he felt constrained to be amiable to one of his staff.

"We both wished to speak to you, Denis," said Mrs. Delarayne. "Sit down, will you."

Denis sat down and folded his arms,--a position Mrs. Delarayne had never seen him assume before.

"It is about Leonetta," she added.

"Oh, yes," said Denis. He was completely dazed. He had just felt that "one touch of nature" which nowadays sets the whole world's teeth on edge,--Eve completely and cheerfully unscrupulous, Eve wild and untamed, cruel and heartless while her deepest passions are still unengaged,--and he felt like one bewitched.

"We wish to ask you," began Sir Joseph pompously.

"Please let me speak," interrupted the widow. "We have noticed,--nobody could have helped noticing,--that since you have been down here you have been paying my daughter Leo unusually marked attention."

"But surely you have also noticed--" Denis objected.

"One moment!" cried Mrs. Delarayne. "I do not say that Leo isn't attractive. I know she's exceedingly attractive,--so attractive that, I understand, even Lord Henry appears to have fallen a victim to her charm."

"Yes, and perhaps you have also heard--" the young man muttered with some agitation.

"I have heard everything," said the widow. "All I suggest is, that since Leo is still a child, and has not perhaps the strength to bear a heavy heart strain as easily as a girl of Cleopatra's age, we should like any attitude you choose to adopt towards her to be made perfectly plain from the start. Do you understand, Denis? I don't wish to be unfriendly."

"I can assure you," protested Denis, who had been rendered none too comfortable by the sting in Mrs. Delarayne's last remarks, "that all along I have always been in deadly earnest, I have always----"

"Hush!" cried the masterful matron. "I don't want to hear now what your sentiments are. All I want you to do is to be quite plain to my little daughter. Do you want to become engaged to her, or not?"

"I do most earnestly," said the young man, "but----"

"But what?" growled Sir Joseph sternly.

"She now says she has no feeling whatever for me," Denis explained.

The baronet turned upon his secretary, scowled, and then regarded Mrs.

Delarayne in astonishment. "No feeling whatever?" he repeated.

"Has she actually told you this?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded with tell-tale eagerness.

"Yes, this minute," Denis replied. "I can hardly believe it," he added with the usual ingenuousness of all vain people. "I can only think that a momentary infatuation for Lord Henry, who has spared no pains to----"

"Do you mean that you have asked her to marry you and she's refused?"

Sir Joseph enquired, observing the young man's painful discomfiture.

"Yes, this very minute."

"Quite positively?" Mrs. Delarayne demanded.

"As far as I can make out--yes," Denis replied. He was so completely bewildered by the rebuff, that the incredulity of his two seniors made it seem all the more impossible to him.

"'Pon my soul!" Sir Joseph exclaimed, utterly abashed.

He could get no further. The prospects of getting Mrs. Delarayne's daughters married appeared to grow gloomier and gloomier.

"Then that's settled, you see, Sir Joseph," Mrs. Delarayne remarked. She had been induced to have this interview with Denis against her will. Her sister and the baronet had prevailed over her better judgment, and now that she saw the issue of it was to be more satisfactory than she could possibly have hoped, she had difficulty in concealing her pleasure.

At this point the report of a fire-arm made them all turn in the direction of Sandlewood.

"They seem to have got a rabbit before reaching the woods," Sir Joseph observed. "That sounded extraordinarily near."

Mrs. Delarayne was silent. She was obviously making an effort not to appear too highly gratified by the news she had heard, and was regarding Denis thoughtfully,--her eyebrows slightly raised, and her fingers drumming lightly on the arms of her chair.

"Well, then," she repeated, "I'm afraid that's settled,--isn't it, Sir Joseph?"

Another report was heard, and Sir Joseph rose.

"I wonder what the deuce they're doing!" he exclaimed going to the window.

"Probably got a stray rabbit, or a hare, on their way," suggested Denis.

Sir Joseph turned from the window to face his secretary.

"That's very odd. So she refused you?" he said.

"Absolutely."

"But you shouldn't despair over one refusal," he exclaimed, casting a glance full of meaning at Mrs. Delarayne. "A man doesn't lie down under one reverse of that sort."

He chuckled, and glanced backwards and forwards, first at his secretary and then at Mrs. Delarayne, hoping she would understand his profound implication.

"You must 'ave more perseverance," he added.

Denis remembered the word "vulgar." He remembered the concentrated fury and contempt that the flapper had put into the expression, and he instinctively felt that it was hopeless.

"I think what I should like to do," he said, "is to leave here, if you will allow me to; finish my holiday elsewhere, and see whether, meanwhile, a change may not come over Leonetta. If it doesn't, then there's an end of it."

"You mean to leave here at once?" enquired the baronet.