"Which is discounted by the fact that you're only a man. All women are born
with at least three years' more common sense in their systems than men."

Tony demurred, and she allowed herself to be led into a friendly wrangle,
inwardly congratulating herself upon having successfully side-tracked
the topic of matrimony. The subject cropped up intermittently in their
intercourse with each other and, from long experience, Ann had brought the
habit of steering him away from it almost to a fine art.

He had been more or less in love with her since he was nineteen, but she
had always refused to take him seriously, believing it to be only the
outcome of conditions which had thrown them together all their lives in a
peculiarly intimate fashion rather than anything of deeper root. But now
that the boy had merged into the man, she had begun to ask herself, a
little apprehensively, whether she were mistaken in her assumption, and she
sometimes wondered if fate had not contrived to enmesh her in a web from
which it would be difficult to escape. Tony was a very persistent lover,
and unfortunately she was not free to send him away from her as she might
have sent away any other man.

Fond as she was of him, she didn't in the least want to marry him. She
didn't want to marry any one, in fact. But circumstances had combined to
give her a very definite sense of responsibility concerning Tony Brabazon.

His father had been the younger son of Sir Percy Brabazon of Lorne, and,
like many other younger sons, had inherited all the charm and most of
the faults, and very little of the money that composed the family dower.
Philip, the heir, and much the elder of the two, pursued a correct and
uneventful existence, remained a bachelor, and in due course came into
the title and estates. Whereas Dick, lovable and hot-headed, and with the