raised his brows and smiled at her.

"There can be undue influence without actual want of mental competence, I think."

"I don't know whether my influence is undue. I believe I'm the only creature alive who cares twopence for the poor old gentleman."

"I know! I know! Mr. Beaumaroy, your position is very difficult. I see that. It really is. But—would you take the money for yourself? Aren't you—well, rather in the position of a trustee?"

"Who for? The hated cousins? What's the reason in that?"

"They may be very good people really. Old men take fancies, as you said yourself. And they may have built on——"

"Stepping into a dead man's shoes? I dare say. Why mayn't I build on it too? Why not my hand against the other fellow's?"

"That's what you learnt from the war! You said so—at Old Place. Captain Naylor said something different."

"Suppose Alec Naylor and I—a hero and a damaged article——" he smiled at Mary, and she smiled back with a sudden enjoyment of the humorous yet bitter tang in his voice—"loved the same woman—and I had a chance of her. Am I to give it up?"

"Really we're getting a long way from medicine, Mr. Beaumaroy!"

"Oh, you're a general practitioner! Wise on all subjects under heaven! Conceive yourself hesitating between him and me——"

Mary laughed frankly. "How absurd you are! If you must go on talking, talk seriously."

"But why am I absurd?"

"Because, if I were a marrying woman—which I'm not—I shouldn't hesitate between you and Captain Naylor, not for a minute."

"You'd jump at me?"

Laughing again—his eyes had now a schoolboy merriment in them—Mary rose from the big chair. "At him, if I'm not being impolite, Mr. Beaumaroy."

They stood face to face. For the first time for several years—Mary's girlhood had not been altogether empty of sentimental episodes—she blushed under a man's glance—because it was a man's. At this event, of which she was acutely conscious and at which she was intensely 

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