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"Are they all old masters?" asked Miss Isabel Otis, politely, her eyes roving over the dark canvases. "Oh no; the masters are down-stairs. I'll show them to you to-morrow. These are not bad, though." "What a lot of ancestors to have!" "Oh, you'll find them all over the house. These are not Gwynnes. This house came to Lord Strathland through the female line.
"Wake me at twenty to seven, will you?" he asked. "I have ordered the trap." The young Marquess of Strathland and Zeal sat alone in the smoking-room at Capheaton the guests, with the exception of Flora Thangue and Isabel Otis had departed six days ago sunk in a melancholy so profound that his brain was mercifully inactive: if the history of the past week was dully insistent the future was not.
The present heir, brilliant, weak, cynical, absolutely selfish, had rioted to such an extent that he had fatally injured his health and incurred the detestation of his grandfather; Lord Strathland was not only a virtuous old gentleman but was also inclined to be miserly.
And I am sorry it is about the only regret I shall take with me, that and some remorse on account of the girls. I suppose Strathland will throw them a bone each " "I will look out for them. But you are not bent on this horror!" he burst out. Wild plans of drugging his cousin, of locking him up, chased through his mind, and at the same time he was sick with the certainty of his own impotence.
He had witnessed the descent of his grandfather and cousin into the vault of the chapel at Strathland Abbey two days before, and after the necessary interviews with stewards and family solicitors had returned this afternoon to Capheaton with his mother.
Always vain of his health and appearance since his complete recovery, now many years ago, Lord Strathland had turned a haughty back upon the one physician that had dared to warn him; not even his valet was permitted to suspect that he had been forced to pay to Time any debt beyond bleaching hair and an occasional twinge of gout.
Lord Strathland's face was pale and he was panting, but he led the way rapidly through the sitting-room into the bedroom. Zeal had undressed, extended himself on the bed, and covered his body with an eider-down quilt. Lord Strathland jerked it off, and both saw what they had expected to see, for a faint odor of burnt powder lingered in the rooms. Lord Strathland's face was ghastly, almost blue.
What then was his foreboding horror when Lord Strathland, as they sat alone at luncheon the unmarried aunts were visiting remarked with acerbity: "Zeal arrived on the train before yours went straight to his room, giving orders he was not to be called until dinner has not honored me with so much as an intimation that he was in the house Where are you going?" Gwynne had half risen.
But Lord Strathland, besides having been presented with six daughters and an heir as extravagant as tradition demanded, was poor as peers go, and had more than once succumbed to the titillating delights of speculation, less cheering in the retrospect.
All three are getting less and less easy to let in their entirety, my agents write me, and I feel half a pauper already." "This is not so bad," murmured Flora. "Strathland would bundle me out in ten minutes if anything happened to Jack." "It would be a pity; it suits you."
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