"Well, I suppose your trouble is connected with the agent you were telling me of yesterday. The man who, it was discovered, had been cooking the accounts, selling your game, pocketing the proceeds, and generally feathering his own nest at your expense."
An ominous frown gathered upon my friend's forehead.
"Upon my word," he said, "I really believe you are taking leave of your senses. Do you think I am bothering myself at such a time about that wretched Mitchell? Let him sell every beast upon the farms, every head of game, and, in point of fact, let him swindle me as he likes, and I wouldn't give a second thought to him."
"I am very sorry," I answered penitently, rolling the leaf of my cigar. "Then it was the yacht you were thinking about? You have had what I consider a very good offer for her. Let her go! You are rich enough to be able to build another, and the work will amuse you. You want employment of some sort."
"I am not thinking of the yacht either," he growled. "You know that as well as I do."
"How should I know it?" I answered. "I am not able to tell what is in your mind. I do not happen to be like Nikola."
"You are singularly obtuse to-day," he asserted, throwing what remained of his cigar into the Canal and taking another from his case.
"Look here," I said, "you're pitching into me because I can't appreciate your position. Now how am I likely to be able to do so, considering that you've told me nothing about it? Before we left London you informed me that the place you had purchased in Warwickshire was going to prove your chief worry in life. I said, 'sell it again.' Then you found that your agent in Yorkshire was not what he might be. I advised you to get rid of him. You would not do so because of his family. Then you confessed in a most lugubrious fashion that your yacht was practically becoming unseaworthy by reason of her age. I suggested that you should sell her to Deeside, who likes her, or part with her for a junk. You vowed you would not do so because she was a favourite. Now you are unhappy, and I naturally suppose that it must be one of those things which is causing you uneasiness. You scout the idea. What, therefore, am I to believe? Upon my word, my friend, if I did not remember that you have always declared your abhorrence of the Sex, I should begin to think you must be in love."
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. I pretended not to notice it, however, and still rolled the leaf of my cigar.
"Would it be such a very mad thing if I did fall in love?" he asked at last. "My father did so before me, and I believe my grandfather did also. You, yourself, committed the same indiscretion."