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the Continent for a few months. Or what do you say to India? My Uncle John"

"Mind you, I don't believe he took them," I interrupted.

"If you did, I shouldn't be sitting at the same table with you," observed my father.

"But she's the most charming girl I ever saw," I remarked, returning to the real point.

"I don't follow the connection of your thoughts," said my father.

There are one or two points that deserve mention here. The Marston property was a very nice one; combined with ours, it would make a first-class estate. Sir Matthew had no son, and Sylvia was his only daughter; to be perpetually opposed in everything by a neighbor is vexatious; my father was not really a convinced Home Ruler, and had only appeared on platforms in that interest because Sir George was such a strong Unionist. Finally, the duchess had said that her patience was exhausted with the squabbles of the Merridews and the Marstons and that for her part she wouldn't ask either of them. Now, my father cared as little for a duchess as any man alive, but the claret at Sangblew Castle was proverbial.

"If," said my father at the end of a long discussion, "the man (he meant Sir Matthew Marston) will make an absolute and unreserved apology, and withdraw all imputations on Uncle John's memory, I shall be willing to consider the matter."

"You might as well," I protested, "ask him to eat the rubies."

"I believe old Sir George did," answered my father grimly.

I must pass over the next two or three months briefly. Thwarted love ran its usual course. Sylvia (whose interview with Sir Matthew had been even more uncomfortable than mine with my father) peaked and pined and was sent to stay with an aunt at Cheltenham; she returned worse than ever. I went to Paris, where I enjoyed myself very well, but I came back inconsolable. Sylvia's health was gravely endangered. I displayed an alarming inability to settle down to anything. We used to meet every day in highest exultation, and part every day in deepest woe. We talked of death and elopement alternately, and treated our fathers with despairing and most exasperating dutifulness. The month of June found ourselves and our affections exactly where we and they had been in March.

A daughter is, I take it, harder to resist than a son. It was for this reason, and not because Sir Matthew was in any degree less stubborn than my father, that the first overtures came from the Marstons.

Sylvia was brimming over with delight when she met me one morning.

"Papa is ready to be reconciled," she cried. "Oh, Jack, isn't it delightful?"

"What? Will he apologize?" I asked, eagerly, as I caught her hand.

"Yes," said she, with smiling lips and