“Here you are! I thought you were coming back to the billiard room, Daddy.”

As Helen Bransby came gayly in, her father threw Latham an appealing look, and shifted a little from the light.

Latham stepped between them. “So he was, Miss Bransby. Forgive me, I kept him.”

“Our side won, Daddy,” said the glad young voice.

“Did we, dear? Then old Hugh owes me a bob.” As the words left his lips, a sudden spasm of memory caught him. Helen saw nothing, but Latham took a quick half-step towards him.

“Are you and Dr. Latham having a confidential chat, Daddy?”

The father contrived to answer her lightly, more lightly than Latham could have done at the moment. That physician was growing more and more anxious.

“What on earth do you think Latham and I could be having a confidential chat about?”

Helen laughed. She had the prettiest laugh in the world. And her flower-like face brimmed over with mischief. “I thought perhaps he was asking your advice about matrimony.”

“Latham?” exclaimed Bransby, so surprised that he almost dropped his precious jade god with which he was still toying.

Latham was distinctly worried—Latham the cool, imperturbable man of the world. “Now, really, Miss Bransby,” he began, and then halted lamely.

“You don’t mean to say that he is contemplating marrying? Latham the adamant bachelor of Harley Street?”

Helen wagged her pretty head impishly. “I can’t say whether he is contemplating it or not, but I know he is face to face with it.”

“Well, upon my word!” Bransby was really interested now.

Latham was intensely uncomfortable. “I am afraid,” he began again, “Miss Bransby exaggerates the danger——”

“Danger?” the girl mocked at him. “That’s not very gallant, is it?”

“And who is the happy woman?” demanded Bransby.

“Angela Hilary.”

Bransby laughed unaffectedly. “Mrs. Hilary? Our American friend, eh? Glad to see you are helping on Anglo-American friendship, my dear fellow. That’s exactly what we need now. I congratulate you, Latham.”

“Please don’t.”

“Oh! he hasn’t proposed yet, Daddy,” said the pretty persistent.

“He has not!” assented Latham briskly.

“But it’s coming!” taunted Helen wickedly.

“It is not!” Latham exclaimed hotly. “I haven’t the slightest intention of proposing to Mrs. Hilary.”

“But what if she should propose to you?” demanded his tormentor.

“I should refuse,” insisted Latham, beside himself with embarrassment.

“And if she won’t take ‘No’ for an answer?”

“You don’t really think it will come to that?” He was really considerably alarmed.

Helen was delighted. “I think it may.”

“Good heavens!”

“I had no idea, Latham,” joined in Bransby, playing up to Helen (he always did play up to Helen), “that you were so attractive to the opposite sex.”

Latham groaned.

“Oh!” Helen said with almost judicial gravity, “I don’t know that it is entirely due to Dr. Latham’s charm that the present crisis has come about. I think Angela’s sense of duty is equally to blame.”

“Mrs. Hilary’s sense of duty!” Latham muttered.

“Really?” quizzed Bransby.

“Yes, Daddy, she feels that bachelorhood is an unfit state for a physician; and because she has a high regard for Dr. Latham she has nobly resolved to cure him of it.”

“But I don’t wish to be cured.”

“Nonsense!” Bransby rebuked him, adding dryly, “what would you say to a patient of yours who talked like that?”

Latham turned to Helen desperately. “I say, Miss Bransby, does she know I am staying with you?”

“No—I think not. I think she’s still in town.”

“That’s a relief.”

“But she’ll find out,” Helen assured him, nodding sagely her naughty red head.

But respite was at hand. “Can we come in?” asked a voice at which Richard Bransby winced again.

“Yes, Hugh, come along,” Helen said cheerfully. “Dr. Latham will be glad to see you; he has finished his delicate confidences.”

“It’s all right, Stephen, we won’t be in the way,” Hugh called over his shoulder as he strolled through the doorway, a boyish, soldierly young figure, sunny-faced, frank-eyed. He wore the khaki of a second lieutenant. He went up to his uncle. Bransby’s fingers tightened at the throat of the green god, and imperiled the delicately cut pink lotus leaves.

“I suppose Helen told you that she beat us,” the young fellow said, laying a coin near Bransby’s hand. “There’s the shilling I owe you, sir—the last of an ill-spent fortune.”

“Thanks,” Bransby spoke with difficulty. But the boy noticed nothing. He already was moving to the back of the room where Helen was sitting.

“Have you told him?” Hugh said in a low voice as he sat down beside her.

“No, not yet.”

Stephen Pryde threw one quick glance to where they sat as he came quickly in, but only one, and he went at once to his uncle. “I hope Grant didn’t bring you any bad news, sir?” he said.

Bransby was sharply annoyed. He answered quickly, with a swift furtive look at his nephew. “How did you know Grant was here?”

“Barker told me. I hope there is nothing wrong, sir?”

“Wrong? What could be wrong?” The impatience of Bransby’s tone brooked no further questioning.

Latham had joined Helen, and Hugh had left her then and had been strolling about the room unconcernedly. He came up to his uncle chuckling.

“Old Grant is a funny old josser,” he said. “He is like a hen with one chick around the office. Why, if one is ten minutes late in the morning, he treats it as if it was a national calamity.”

Bransby lifted his head a little and looked Hugh straight in the face. It was the first time their eyes had met—since Grant’s visit. “Grant has always had great faith in you, Hugh,” the uncle said gravely.

Hugh responded cheerfully. “He’s been jolly kind to me, too. He is a good old sport, when you get beneath all the fuss and feathers.” And he strolled back to Helen, Richard’s eyes following him sadly. Latham gave way to Hugh and wandered over to a bookcase and began examining its treasures.

Stephen Pryde turned to his uncle again. “The business that brought him—Grant—can I attend to it for you, Uncle Dick?”

“No, thank you, Stephen, it—it is purely a personal matter.”

Pryde helped himself to a cigarette, saying, “Did he say whether he had heard from Jepson?” and trying to speak carelessly.

Bransby answered him impatiently. “No; I was glad to find out, however, that Grant agrees with me that your scheme for controlling the output of aeroplane engines is an impossible one for us.”

Pryde’s face stiffened. “Then he is wrong,” he said curtly.

Bransby angered. “He is not wrong. Haven’t I just said he agreed with me?”

“If you gave the matter serious attention, instead of opposing it blindly, simply because it came from me——”

But this was too much. Bransby stopped him hotly, “I don’t oppose it because it comes from you. I am against it because it isn’t sound. If it were, I would have thought of it.”

“You don’t realize the possibilities.” Stephen spoke as hotly as the elder had, but there was pleading in his voice.

Latham was watching them now—closely.

“There are no possibilities, I tell you,” Bransby continued roughly, “and that should be sufficient—it always has been for every one in my establishment but you”—he turned to Latham: “Stephen is trying to induce me to give up shipbuilding for aeroplane engines—and not only that, he wants to spend our surplus in buying every plant we are able that can be turned to that use.”

“Yes,” Stephen urged, “because after the war the future of the world will be in the air.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“And no one believed in steel ships.”

“That has nothing to do with this.” Bransby was growing testy, and always his troubled eyes would turn to Hugh—to Hugh and Helen.

“It has,” Stephen insisted, “for it shows how the problem of transportation has evolved. The men of the future are the men who realize the chance the conquest of the air has given them.”

“Well, let who wishes go in for it. I am quite satisfied with our business as it is, and at my time of life I am not going to embark on ambitious schemes. We make money enough.”

“Money!” Pryde said with bitter scorn. “It isn’t the money that makes me keen. It’s the power to be gained—the power to build and to destroy.” The tense face was fierce and transfigured. The typical face of a seer, Latham thought, watching him curiously. “I tell you, sir, that from now on the men who rule the air are the men who will rule the world.” The voice changed, imperiousness cast away, it was tender, caressingly pleading—“Uncle Dick——”

But Bransby’s irritation was now beyond all control. The day, and its revelation and pain, had tortured him enough; his nerves had no resistance left with which to meet petty annoyance largely. “And I tell you,” he said heatedly, getting on to his feet, “that I have heard all about the matter I care to hear, now or ever. I’ve said ‘No,’ and that ends it. Once I make a decision I never change it, and—I—I—I——”

Latham laid a hand on his wrist. “Tut, tut, Bransby, you must not excite yourself.”

Bransby sank back wearily into his chair—putting the paper-weight down with an impatient gesture; it made a small clatter.

Stephen Pryde shrugged his shoulders and turned away drearily with a half-muttered apology, “I’m sorry, I forgot,” and an oath unspoken but black. There was despair on his face, misery in his eyes.