designs."
"The Duchess is always so helpful," Robert grunted.
"So long as it costs her nothing," Lady Margaret declared, "nothing makes her so happy as to put the whole world to rights."
"Here she comes—in a taxicab, too," Sir Robert announced, looking out of the window. "She is getting positively penurious."
"She is probably showing off before the American," Lady Margaret remarked. "She is always talking about living in a semi-detached house and making her own clothes. Up to the present, though, she has stuck to Worth."
The Duchess, who duly arrived a few moments later, brought with her into the room a different and essentially a more cosmopolitan atmosphere. She was a tall, fair woman, attractive in an odd sort of way, with large features, a delightful smile, and a habit of rapid speech. She exchanged hasty greetings with every one present and then turned back towards the man who had followed her into the room.
"Letty dear, this is Mr. David Thain—Lady Letitia Thursford. I told you about Mr. Thain, dear, didn't I? This is almost his first visit to England, and I want every one to be nice to him. Mr. Thain, this is my other niece, Lady Margaret Lees, and her husband, Sir Robert Lees. Where's Reginald?"
"Father will be here directly," Letitia replied. "If any one's famished, we can commence lunch."
"Then let us commence, by all means," the Duchess suggested. "I have been giving the whole of the morning to Mr. Thain, improving his mind and showing him things. We wound up with the shops—although I am sure Alfred's tradespeople are no use to any one."
Letitia moved a few steps towards the bell, and on her way back she encountered the somewhat earnest gaze of her aunt's protégé. Even in those few moments since his entrance, she had been conscious of a somewhat different atmosphere in the faded but stately room. He had the air of appraising everything yet belonging nowhere, of being wholly out of touch with an environment which he could scarcely be expected to understand or appreciate. He was not noticeably ill-at-ease. On the other hand, his deportment was too rigid for naturalness, and she was conscious of some quality in his rather too steadfast scrutiny of herself which militated strongly against her usual toleration. He seemed to stand for events, and in the lives which they mostly lived, events were ignored.
The butler opened the door and announced luncheon. They crossed the very handsome, if somewhat empty hall, into the sombre, mahogany-furnished dining room, the walls of which were closely hung with oil paintings. Letitia motioned the stranger to sit at her right hand, and fancied that he seemed a little relieved at this brief escape from his cicerone. Having gone so far, however, she ignored him for several moments whilst she watched the seating of her other guests. Her brother-in-law she drew to the vacant place on her left.
"I dare say father will lunch at the club," she whispered. "Aunt Caroline always ruffles him."
"I am afraid he will have found something down Temple Bar way to ruffle him a great deal more this morning," Sir Robert replied.
The door of the dining room was at that moment thrown open, however, and the Marquis entered. Pausing for a moment on the threshold, in line with a long row of dingy portraits, there was something distinctly striking in the family likeness so mercilessly reproduced in his long face, with the somewhat high cheek bones, his tall, angular figure, the easy bearing and gracious smile. One missed the snuffbox from between his fingers, and the uniform, but there was yet something curiously unmodern in the appearance of this last representative of the Mandeleys.
"Let no one disturb themselves, pray," he begged. "I am a little late. My dear Caroline, I am delighted to see you," he went on, raising his sister's fingers to his lips. "Margaret, I shall make no enquiries about your health! You are looking wonderfully well to-day."
The Duchess glanced towards her protégé, who had risen to his feet and stood facing his newly arrived host. There was a moment's poignant silence. The two men, for some reason or other, seemed to regard each other with no common interest.
"This is my friend, Mr. David Thain," the Duchess announced—"my brother, the Marquis of Mandeleys. Mr. Thain is an American, Reginald."
The Marquis shook hands with his guest, a form of welcome in which he seldom indulged.
"Any friend of yours, Caroline," he said quietly, "is very welcome to my house. Robert," he added, as he took his seat, "they tell me that you were talking rubbish about agriculture in the House last night. Why do you talk about agriculture? You know nothing about it. You are not even, so far as I remember, a landed proprietor."
Sir Robert smiled.
"And therefore, sir, I am unprejudiced."
"No one can talk about land, nowadays, without being prejudiced," his father-in-law rejoined.
"Father," Letitia begged, "do tell us about the case."
The Marquis watched the whiskey and soda with which his glass was being filled.
"The case, my dear," he acknowledged, "has, I am sorry to say, gone against me. A remarkably ill-informed and unattractive looking person, whom they tell me will presently be Lord Chief Justice, presumed not only to give a decision which was in itself quite absurd, but also refused leave to appeal."
"Sorry to hear that, sir," Sir Robert remarked. "Cost you a lot of money, too, I'm afraid."
"I believe that it has been an expensive case," the Marquis admitted. "My lawyer seemed very depressed about it."
"And you mean to say that it's really all over and done with now?" Lady Margaret enquired.
"For the present, it certainly seems so," the Marquis replied. "I cannot believe, personally, that the laws of my country afford me no relief, under the peculiar circumstances of the case. According to Mr. Wadham, however, they do not."
"What is it all about, anyway, Reginald?" his sister asked. "I have heard more than once but I have forgotten. Whenever I look in the paper for a divorce case, I nearly always see your name against the King, or the King against you, with a person named Vont also interested. Surely the Vont family have been retainers down at Mandeleys for generations? I remember one of them perfectly well."
The Marquis cleared his throat.
"The unfortunate circumstances," he said, "are perhaps little known even amongst the members of my own family. Perhaps it will suffice if I say that, owing to an indiscretion of my uncle and predecessor, the eleventh Marquis, a gamekeeper's cottage and small plot of land, curiously situated in the shadow of Mandeleys, became the property of a yeoman of the name of Vont. This ill-advised and singular action of my late uncle is complicated by the fact that the inheritors of his bounty have become, as a family, inimical to their patrons. Their present representative, for instance, is obsessed by some real or fancied grievance upon which I scarcely care to dilate. For nearly twenty years," the Marquis continued ruminatively, "the cottage has been empty except for the presence of an elderly person who died some years ago. Since then I have, through my lawyers, endeavoured, both by purchase and by upsetting the deed of gift, to regain possession of the property. The legal owner appears to be domiciled in America, and as he has been able to resist my lawsuits and has refused all my offers of purchase, I gather that in that democratic country he has amassed a certain measure of wealth. We are now confronted with the fact that this person announces his intention of returning to England and taking up his residence within a few yards of my front door."
Sir
