“ Give me some more brandy, Martha."
So Mr. Murdoch, promising to preserve absolute silence, went away like a man recovering from a bad dream, and grandpapa, having taken a great deal more spirit than was good for him, slumbered uneasily on the sofa.
In his dreams I could hear him wrangling with something supernatural, and evidently getting the worst of the argument. "It's too bad," I heard him say. "It's simple sharp practice to jump on an old man like me, and make him sign a one-sided thing like that when he was half asleep!" ”

“ I cried, running to him as he subsided on the sofa. "Oh, why will you be so active at your time of life? You'll kill yourself if you go on so. What have you done now? You've strained something internal with that flute--I know you have."
"I've found it! I've found it!" he cried, trembling all over.
"Of course, or else you couldn't play it," I replied.
"I've found IT," he repeated, raising his hand wildly and waving a manuscript over his head. "Read that--Oh, why was I ever born? Read it, I tell you. It's a real agreement, on parchment, not a nightmare at all. ”

“ Going to Monte Carlo!"
"Yes. Don't want you. It's simply a matter of business."
"Let me explain," said Mr. Montague. "You are rather startled, dear Miss Dolphin, and I cannot wonder at it."
He blew his nose. His handkerchiefs and shirt-cuffs and so on were always beautiful. He said:
"The facts are these. I have had an inspiration. Heaven has from my earliest youth been pleased to bestow upon me certain mathematical gifts denied to most men. This power of dealing with figures was not given me for nothing. It is a talent not to be hidden in a napkin."
"No fear," said grandpapa. ”

“ I only remembered the date of his birthday, and realised that on the night before that anniversary the New Scheme would come to an end. The old man was now a mere hairless, blotchy, howling fragment, needing ceaseless attention at all hours of night and day. A bitter thought often came to me while I was getting his bottle--that my tiny grandfather should be going to such an unsatisfactory place so soon. For I never could believe, despite what the lawyers said, that his fiendish opponent had made any radical blunder in the agreement. ”

“ I could not help contrasting him with grandpapa, to the disadvantage of the latter. They looked about the same age, yet how different in their conduct, language, and attitude towards the gentler sex! One behaved, and thought, and acted as though he was forty-five; the other, who ought, heaven knows, to have been old-fashioned, and staid, and sensible, conducted himself like a fast, silly boy of twenty-one. For about this time grandfather began to grow young for his years, even on the New Scheme. ”

“ The brats would be your uncles and aunts, and my wife your grandmother! What a fool you'd look!"
I couldn't see it, and for the first time since the commencement of the New Scheme, I lost my temper with grandpapa.
"Oh, you horrid, depraved old man!" I cried, "will no words, or tears, or prayers, make you pause and reflect? Cannot your only surviving relation, your own son's child, carry any weight with you? Would you rather have this flighty female at your side than me? Cannot you realise what I am doing for you, what you would be without me? ”

“ My grandpapa returned to dinner. He wept into his plate all through that meal, and showed me in a thousand ways that his enterprise had produced no good results.
"Speak, my treasure!" I cried at length, unable to bear the suspense; "is it as bad as you thought?"
"A million times worse!"
"Worse! What could be worse, grandpapa?"
"I'll explain. This fool--Nick, I mean--has drawn out the thing single-handed, and defeated his own object, and wrecked me utterly. I saw Mr. Hawker himself. He studied the agreement for an hour, then gave judgment on it. ”

“ Think, dear Miss Dolphin, of a world from which all element of chance is eliminated! The vices of gambling and betting vanish. Mathematics will rise superior to human roguery. We know when to expect red or black--I refer to card-playing; we know which horse ought to win every race, and if it doesn't we know where to throw the blame; we know everything; we are become as gods!"
"But what has that to do with Monte Carlo, sir?" I ventured to ask.
"Good old Martha! Go up one," said grandpapa.
Then Mr. Montague turned to me and answered my question. ”

“ My object is that a materialistic age may be confounded, that those who do not believe in the principalities and powers by which mankind is secretly led and guided, blinded and befooled, may pause and reflect before they find themselves meshed in some muddling devil's web, from which there is no escape. ”

“ But grandpapa had sown the wind and the whirlwind was beginning to spring up. Time did not fly as quickly with the world as it seemed to do with us. The young fellow with his simple athletic interests and ambitions, training quietly for the Diamond Sculls, was not destined to escape the fruits of those many indiscretions committed in his maturer years; and it is hardly the least of my griefs and regrets that, in a measure, I was the cause of keeping grandpapa's name before the world, and before divers more or less malicious women, who refused to forget his past relationships with them. ”

“ But grandpapa still longed to be hanged. He even discussed the feasibility of a capital crime at Margate, and, as it was all one to him in the matter of a victim, he generously offered to put anybody I liked out of the way. He even bought a revolver.
"To be executed it is necessary to take a life," he explained. "The question is, whose life? If you've got an enemy, Martha, now's your time to name him or her. If you've no fancy, then I shall pip a prominent member of the Government."
But two months passed by, and my grandfather's horrid ambition gradually faded. ”

“ You are probably not aware that, in the ordinary course of events, to-morrow morning--the morning of your hundredth birthday--will never come for you. The sun will rise and find you lifeless clay; your granddaughter will knock at your chamber door and receive no answer; for your days are numbered, your span of life, handsome enough in all conscience, is done. But listen, I can guarantee ten more years. We only do these things for very old customers. Put yourself in my hands and ten more mundane years of life shall be yours.'"
Here my grandpapa broke off to chuckle, which he did very heartily. ”

“ What d' you think you're doing, you muddle-headed old mummy? Sit straight and look at the river, not at the moon. I'll make you sign the pledge to-morrow, blessed if I don't! You'll have more water with your whisky than you want in a moment. Oh, Lord! never again--never. Pull the right string--the right. Holy mouse! On Sunday evening too! ”

“ I've tried to keep the malady a secret, but female lunatics are so cunning."
"Madness is hereditary. Oh, Dan, Dan, if papa knows that your poor mother is so very eccentric, he will never consent."
"He has consented, my darling. Fear nothing. My mother's insanity is not hereditary. She fell out of a three-storey window on to her head when she was seventeen. Since then the ailment has appeared occasionally. Her customary hallucination is blue rats. You say she thinks I am her grandpapa! Poor old soul! Go home, dear joy of my life! We meet to-morrow, after the Squire and I have seen the lawyers." ”

“ They used to keep their drawing-room blind up at night, so that people passing might see pink lamp-shades throwing a beautiful reflection on their pretty things; and at such times the Misses Bangley-Brown would sit in graceful attitudes in their evening toilets, and Mr. Bangley-Brown, who wore a velvet coat after dinner, would play the banjo and sing. There was often quite a little audience outside on the pavement to watch them. They were most high-bred gentlepeople, and one could see at a glance that evil fortune alone brought them to Wharton Terrace. ”

“ Monte Carlo is the headquarters of this pestilential passion, this love of gambling which dominates mankind. We are going to begin a crusade there, and fight against the most powerful troops the enemy has at command. ”

“ Murdoch, of Ealing, knows the truth. Rise up and tell everybody, grandpapa!"
He shaved now, with the exception of his moustache. This he tugged and twisted, and looked at me with undisguised contempt.
"Well, that fairly takes the crumb!" he said. "D' you actually suggest that I should go on the housetops and cry, 'Look at me, look at me, good people; I'm nearly a hundred and seven years of age; I've signed a treaty with the devil. He will have what is left of me in about three years. This ancient woman is my granddaughter. Come, all of you, pray for us'? Would you suggest I did that, Martha?" ”

“ The day after you bolted I met old Talbot and his lawyer about a settlement. I talked rather big, and suggested fifty thousand. Then the brute of a lawyer said, after he had heard my name, 'How odd. Now there is a gentleman I have been wanting to find for the last two years nearly, and he is called Daniel Dolphin!' Like a fool, and forgetting the man he wanted must be years older than me, I lost my nerve, and the lawyer saw that I had. 'It's an odd name--perhaps a relative?' he said. 'The gentleman I mean used to live at Chislehurst. ”

“ Bangley-Brown, "if I could get to you I'd box your ears."
She rose and made the boat shake, and her daughters implored her to sit down, or they would all be in the river.
"Yes, you're a bad old lady--a regular old fossil-hunter, and no mistake," said grandpapa, shaking his head at her. "Shocking example for the gals!" Then he began to row away.
"Follow them! Don't lose sight of them!" cried the angry woman; but grandpapa was a fine oar and had a light load. He simply laughed at their efforts to keep pace with him, and fired off all sorts of jokes at the pursuers. ”

“ The early hours and exercise at lawn-tennis did wonders. Men do not alter much between thirty and forty as a rule, but grandpapa began to get absolutely boyish. Half the pretty girls in the place were in love with him. Everybody thought he was younger than even the New Scheme made him appear.
I felt all along that he was not conducting his reformation on right lines, for what hope of success could be expected when the entire structure of his life stood on foundations of falsehood? ”

“ I did not see my way to gratifying either ambition. At Tavybridge grandpapa speedily waned. He called me "Granny" now, and quite believed it was so; I addressed him both in public and private as "Daniel," and let people believe that his parents were in India. Though I lacked the comfort and support of having a man in the house, to whom I could go with all my sorrows and anxieties, yet the loss was more than compensated by the relief of knowing that my ancient grandparent was now powerless to do further ill, either to himself or other people. ”

“ Apart from the monstrous step my grandfather had taken, his own condition threw us more and more open to comment. The servants noticed it, and imagined the old man got the effect with hair-dyes and cosmetics. But as a matter of fact, every change was in the ordinary, or rather extraordinary course which Nature now pursued with grandpapa.
He was on thorns to be off after his engagement became known. "There's no fool like an old fool," he said. ”