a dark, fine face and foreign-looking eyes who moved toward them.
Lord Julius put a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “Christian,” he said, and gave his full voice a new note of gravity, “these are your two cousins, Mr. Edward Torr, a captain in the Hussars until recently, and Mr. Augustine Torr, a member of Parliament. Your coming will make some difference in their affairs, but I know that you will be good to them.”
The brothers had shaken hands with the new-comer automatically, while their minds were in the first stage of wonderment as to what the words being spoken about him meant. Now that silence fell, they stared slowly at him, at their great-uncle, at each other.
“How—cousin?” Edward managed to ask. He spoke as if his tongue filled his mouth.
“The son of your uncle, Lord Ambrose Torr,” the old man made quiet, carefully distinct answer.
Another period of silence ensued, until Christian turned abruptly. “It is very painful to me,” he said hurriedly to the old man, and walked to the window.
“It is painful to everybody,” said Lord Julius.
“Not so damned particularly painful to you, sir, I should say,” put in Edward, looking his great-uncle in the face. The young man had slowly pulled himself together, and one could see the muscles of his neck being stiffened to keep his chin well in the air. His blue eyes had the effect of summoning all their resources of pride to gaze with dignity into the muzzle of a machine-gun.
Augustine was less secure in the control of his nerves. He stood a little behind his brother, and the elbow which he braced against him for support trembled. His eyes wandered about the room, and he moistened his lips with his tongue several times before he contrived to whisper something into Edward’s ear. The latter received the suggestion, whatever it was, with an impatient shake of the head.
“You scarcely do me justice,” said Lord Julius, quietly, “but that’s not worth mentioning at the moment. I must say you are taking it very well—much better than I expected.”
Edward squared his shoulders still more. “I wouldn’t say that we’re takin’ it at all,” he replied, with studied deliberation. “You offer it, d’ye see—but it doesn’t follow that we take it. You come and bring this young fellow—this young gentleman, and you tell me that he is Ambrose’s son. What good is that to me? Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Ambrose may have had twenty sons, for all I know. I should be sorry to be one of them—but they’re not to blame for that. I don’t mind being civil to them—if they come to me in the right spirit—” He stopped abruptly, and listened with a frown to more whispering from Augustine.
“You don’t seem to understand, Eddy—” began Lord Julius.
“Oh, perfectly!” broke in the young man. “I had an uncle who had to leave England before I was born. His name couldn’t even be mentioned in the family—but I know all about him. God knows I’ve had him flung in my face often enough.”
“Don’t let us go into that,” urged Lord Julius, softly, and with a sidelong nod toward the window. “It’s needless cruelty to other people—and surely we can discuss this like gentlemen. You are really behaving splendidly, Eddy.”
“God! he thought we were cads!” cried Edward, in husky indignation.
“No—no—no—no,” murmured the older man, soothingly. “I only want you to grasp the thing as it is. You know me. You do not regard me as a foolish person who goes off half-cock. Well, I tell you that Christian here is the son of my nephew Ambrose, born in lawful wedlock, and that there is not a shadow of doubt about it. The proofs are all open to your inspection; there is not a flaw in them. And so I say to you, in all kindness—take it calmly and sensibly and like a gentleman. It is to your own interest to do so, as well. If you think, you will see that.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling him,” said Augustine, strenuously, from behind his brother’s shoulder.
A faint smile fluttered about the old man’s eyelids. “It was the advice of a born statesman,” he said, dryly. “You are the political hope of the family.”
The stiffening had melted from Edward’s neck and shoulders. He turned irresolutely now, and looked at the floor. “Of course I admit nothing; I reserve all my rights, till my lawyers have satisfied themselves,” he said in a worn, depressed mutter.
“Why, naturally,” responded Lord Julius, with relieved cordiality. “And now please me—do it all handsomely to the end—come and shake hands again with Christian, both of you.”
The brothers stood for a hesitating instant, then turned toward the window and began a movement of reluctant assent.
To the surprise of all three, Christian forestalled their approach by wrenching open one half of the tall window, and putting a foot over the sill to the lawn outside.
“If you will excuse me,” he said, in his nervous, high voice, “I am taking a little walk.”
CHAPTER IV
Upon the garden side of Caermere is a very large conservatory, built nearly fifty years ago, at the close of the life of the last duchess. The poor lady left no other mark of her meek existence upon the buildings, and it was thought at the time that she would never have ventured upon even this, had it not been that every one was mad for the moment about the wonderful palace of glass reared in London for the First Exhibition.
In area and height, and in the spacious pretensions of its dome, the structure still suggests irresistibly the period of its inception. It is as ambitious as it is self-conscious; its shining respectability remains superior to all the wiles of climbers and creeping vines. The older servants cherish traditions of “Her Grace’s glass,” as it used to be called. She had the work begun on her fortieth birthday, and precisely a year later it happened that she was wheeled in from the big morning room, and left at her own desire to recline in solitude under the palms beneath the dome, and that when they went to her at last she was dead. The circumstance that Shakespeare is supposed also to have died on the anniversary of his birth, has somehow come to be an integral part of the story, as it is kept alive now in the humbler parts of the Caermere household, but the duchess had nothing else in common with the poet. The very face of her, in her maturer years, is but dimly remembered. The portrait in the library is of a young Lady Clarissa, with pale ringlets and a childishly sweet countenance, and clad in the formal quaintness of the last year of King George the Fourth. She became the duchess, but in turn the duchess, seemed to become somebody else. That was the way with the brides brought home to Caermere. The pictures in the library show them all girlish, and innocently pretty, and for the most part fair-haired. Happily there is no painted record of what they were like when, still in middle life, they bade a last goodbye to the dark-skinned, big-shouldered sons they had borne, and perhaps made a little moan that no daughters were ever given to mothers at Caermere, and turned their sad faces to the wall.
The crystal house had memories of another and more recent mistress, the countess. She had come six years after the other went, she had lived for twelve years—a silent, colorless, gently unhappy life—and then had faded away out of sight. It was this Lady Porlock who had caused the orchid houses to be built at the inner side of the conservatory, and it was in her time, too, that the gifted Cheltnam
