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“Rather cheap chaff, isn’t it?”

“It’s a very lucky thing for you,” said Stephen savagely. “Perhaps I ought not to grudge it to you. But I must say, Dornington—I see we look at the thing differently—but I must say, I shouldn’t have cared to grab at such luck myself.”

Dornington had thrust his hands into his pockets, and stood looking at his friend.

“I see,” he said slowly. “And her fortune is really so much? I didn’t think it had been so much as that. Yes. Well, Guillemot, it’s no good making a row about it; I don’t want to quarrel with my best friend. Go along to my place, will you? Or stay: come and let me introduce you to Miss Grant, and you can walk up with her; she’ll show you where I live. I’m going for a bit of a walk.”

Five minutes later Stephen, in response to Rosamund’s beckoning hand at the window, was following Miss Grant up the narrow flagged path leading to the cottage which Rosamund had taken. And ten minutes later Andrew Dornington was striding along the road to the station with a Gladstone bag in his hands.