the true position of affairs which had been so carefully withheld from him. "I give in, old fellow," he said, wiping his eyes with a mauve silk handkerchief and wafting a perfume about the room. "I was only codding you. I don't want to marry the girl. But Bracken does."
"And so do I," rejoined Hench tartly.
"H'm! I'm not so sure of that. Yours is a cold-blooded wooing. The girl asks you for the bread of love and you give her the stone of admiration."
"She doesn't ask me for love," said the tall young man with a sigh. "I am not so blind but what I can see that she loves Bracken."
"Then why don't you sheer off?"
"I don't like any man to get the better of me."
"There speaks the buccaneer, the cave-man, the prehistoric grabber. Lord! what a weird state of things, and how simple you are, Hench, to place all your cards on the table. I can teach you a thing or two."
"I am quite sure you can," said Hench dryly, and disliking the wit of this effeminate little creature, which was so extremely keen; "but I go my own way, thank you, and dree my own weird. It is probable that I will ask Madame Alpenny if I can marry Zara, and if Zara is agreeable----"
"Which by your own showing she won't be," put in Spruce parenthetically.
"----I'll marry her. If not, I'll go away and let Bracken make her his wife."
Spruce rose with a yawn. "I fancy Madame Alpenny will have a word or two to say to that, my dear fellow. Why don't you skip now?"
"Because I admire Zara and mean to give her the chance of accepting or rejecting me," said Hench doggedly. "Also, I can't leave London for a few weeks, as I have to interview my father's lawyers."
"What about?"
"I can't tell you. My father left certain papers with his lawyers which were to be given to me when I attained the age of twenty-five. My birthday arrives shortly, and then I'll see what is to be done."
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