“As you should have done at first,” said Faradeane, grimly. “Would to Heaven you had. No, Bertie, none. Don’t go to her. Accept my report. Why should you harass her? I tell you that there is no more chance of her marrying you than there is of her marrying—the Sultan of Mocha. Be a man, Cherub. There are other women——”
Bertie put up his hand.
“Don’t,” he said, wincing. “I can’t bear that anyhow. I’m—I’m very grateful to you, old fellow. You did what few men would have done, what I would have asked no other man to do, and—and I’m grateful. Even now, crushed and knocked out of time as I am, I can scarcely realize it. I thought she might not consent right away, that she might say she’d think it over——”
“There was no occasion for her to do that,” said Faradeane, grimly.
Bertie looked up sharply.
“You mean that there was—some one else?” he said, with the acuteness of a man whose nerves are on the rack.
Faradeane nodded.
“There is! Who—who is it?”
“Mr. Bartley Bradstone.”
Bertie groaned.