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For the Merceron men had always pleased themselves. On the evening of the next day, while the sun was still on the Pool, and its waters, forgetful of darker moods and bygone tragedies, smiled under the tickling of darting golden gleams, a girl sat on the broad lowest step of the temple.

Vansittart Merceron was not quite sure that Victor Sutton had any business to call him "Merceron." He was nearly twenty years older than Victor, and a man of considerable position; nor was he, as some middle-aged men are, flattered by the implication of contemporaneousness carried by the mode of address.

I should be much obliged if you would be so kind as to tell me what to say if I meet the gentlemen again. Mr. Merceron is very pressing in asking me for news of you. I am to be married in a fortnight from the present date, and I am, Madam, yours respectfully, Nettie Wallace." "In London, and with Calder!" exclaimed Agatha Glyn. "Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! What is to be done?

Nettie was the daughter of Lord Thrapston's housekeeper, and the two girls had been intimate in youth, much as Charlie Merceron and Willie Prime had been at the Court; and when Nettie, scorning servitude, set up in life for herself, Agatha gave her her custom and did not withdraw her friendship.

"Well," said Lord Thrapston, "it's just possible, Aggy, that he may have something to say to it, isn't it?" "I don't mind what he says," declared Agatha. "Eh? Why, I thought you were so fond of him." "So I am." "And as you're going to marry him "I never said I was going to marry him. I only said he might be engaged to me, if he liked." "Oho! So this young Merceron " "Not at all, grandpapa.

But the old house was theirs, and a comfortable remnant of the lands, and the pictures of the extinct earls and barons, down to him whose sins had robbed the line of its surviving rank and left it in a position, from an heraldic point of view, of doubtful respectability. Lady Merceron felt so acutely on the subject that she banished this last nobleman to the smoking-room.

"I hear," remarked Lady Merceron a few days later, "that one of Mr. Prime's friends has left him not Willie's young lady the other." "Has she?" asked Charlie. No one pursued the subject, and, after a moment's pause, Mrs. Marland, who was sitting next to Charlie, asked him in a low voice whether he had been to the Pool that evening . "No," answered Charlie. "I don't go every night."

Millie's robust mind was not prone to superstition, yet she was rather relieved to think that, with the sun only just gone, there was a clear hour before Agatha Merceron would come out of the temple, slowly and fearfully descend the shallow flight of marble steps, and lay herself down in the water to die.

It is not very easy to assert a social position when one has nothing on, and only one's head out of water, but Willie did it. "Good-morning er Merceron," said he. Victor heard him, and put up his eyeglass in amazement; but he, in his turn, had only a shirt on, and the hauteur was a failure. Charlie utterly failed to notice the incident. "Is it cold?" he shouted. "Beastly," answered Willie.

It was all very well for Charlie to count on that blessed evening; but he reckoned without his host or rather without his guests. The Bushells came to lunch, Millie driving her terrified mother in a lofty gig; and at lunch Millie recounted her vision of Agatha Merceron. She did not believe it, of course; but it was queer, wasn't it? Victor Sutton rose to the bait at once.