"Aren't you rather a dog-in-the-manger, Hench?"
"No. I admire the girl."
"She wants love, which you evidently can't give her," retorted Spruce in an emphatic manner. "Now, if I can love her----"
"You said that she wasn't your sort."
"She isn't. Still, she is handsome, and one might pick up a worse wife."
"But not a worse mother-in-law. So far as I am concerned it doesn't matter, as I have neither kith nor kin to my knowledge, and, moreover, I am a vagabond upon the face of the earth. But with your family connections and position and money, the marriage would not be a success, seeing that it entails your taking Madame Alpenny to the West End. There she would scarcely do you credit."
Spruce rocked with laughter, and wondered what Hench would say if he knew 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."