"So?" Mr. Brellier said quietly. "Well, I am very, very glad. You have
taken your time, _mes enfants_, in settling this greatest of all
questions, but perhaps you have been wise.... I am very happy for you, my
'Toinette, for I feel that your future is in the keeping of a good and
true man. There are all too few in the world, believe me!...

"'Toinette, a friend awaits you in the drawing-room. Someone, I fear me,
who will be none too pleased to hear this news, but that's as may be.
Dacre Wynne is there, 'Toinette."

At the name a chill came over Merriton.

_Dacre Wynne!_ And here! Impossible, and yet the name was too uncommon
for it to be a different person from the man who always seemed somehow to
turn up wherever he, Merriton, might chance to be. Sort of a fateful
affinity. Good friends and all that, but somehow the things he always
wanted, Dacre Wynne had invariably come by just beforehand. There was
much more than friendly rivalry in their acquaintanceship. And once, as
mere youngsters of seventeen and eighteen, there had been a girl, _his_
girl, until Dacre came and took her with that masterful way of his. There
was something brutally over-powering about Dacre, hard as granite,
forceful, magnetic. To Nigel's young, clean, wholesome mind, little given
to morbid imaginings as it was, it had almost seemed as if their two
spirits were in some stifling stranglehold together, wrapt about and
intertwined by a hand operating by means of some unknown medium. And now
to find him here in his hour of happiness. Was this close, uncomfortable
companionship of the spirit to be forced on him again? If Wynne were
present he felt he would be powerless to avoid it.