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showed no outward sign of it, and the liquid went on trickling from one bottle to the other with the same uniform steadiness.

"Yes?" said Bryce inquiringly. "One moment."

He finished his task calmly, put the corks in the bottles, labelled one, restored the other to a shelf, and turned round. Not a man to be easily startled—not easily turned from a purpose, this, thought Ransford as he glanced at Bryce's eyes, which had a trick of fastening their gaze on people with an odd, disconcerting persistency.

"I'm sorry to say what I must say," he began. "But—you've brought it on yourself. I gave you a hint some time ago that your attentions were not welcome to Miss Bewery."

Bryce made no immediate response. Instead, leaning almost carelessly and indifferently against the table at which he had been busy with drugs and bottles, he took a small file from his waistcoat pocket and began to polish his carefully cut nails.

"Yes?" he said, after a pause. "Well?"

"In spite of it," continued Ransford, "you've since addressed her again on the matter—not merely once, but twice."

Bryce put his file away, and thrusting his hands in his pockets, crossed his feet as he leaned back against the table—his whole attitude suggesting, whether meaningly or not, that he was very much at his ease.

"There's a great deal to be said on a point like this," he observed. "If a man wishes a certain young woman to become his wife, what right has any other man—or the young woman herself, for that matter—