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Updated: June 3, 2025
It was a fact that Lord Talgarth was pleased with himself and all the world to-day, for he kept it up even with the footman who slipped, and all but lost his balance, as he brought tea into the library. "Hold up!" remarked the nobleman. The footman smiled gently and weakly, after the manner of a dependent, and related the incident with caustic gusto to his fellows in the pantry.
"That's entirely my own affair," she said, "and Frank's." Lord Talgarth blazed up a little. "And the eight hundred a year is mine," he said. Jenny laid down her spoon as the servant reappeared with the fish and the menu-card. He came very opportunely. And while her host was considering what he would eat next, she was pondering her next move.
Certainly she looked white in the falling dusk, but her eyes were merry and steadfast, and her voice perfectly natural. "That's how we've settled it," she said. "And if I'm satisfied, I imagine everyone else ought to be. And I'm going to write Frank a good long letter all by myself. Come along, father, we must be going. Lord Talgarth isn't well, and we mustn't keep him up."
"Frank, eh? Have you? And what's the young cub at, now?" "He's in trouble, as usual, poor boy!" remarked Jenny, genially. "He's very well, thank you, and sends you his love." Lord Talgarth cast her a pregnant glance. "Well, if he didn't, I'm sure he meant to," went on Jenny; "but I expect he forgot. You see, he's been in prison."
It was a little dismaying, therefore, for his friend to reflect that upon the arrival of the famous letter from Lord Talgarth Frank's father six days previously, in which all the well-worn phrases occurred as to "darkening doors" and "roof" and "disgrace to the family," Frank had announced that he proposed to take his father at his word, sell up his property and set out like a prince in a fairy-tale to make his fortune.
Also, in the course of his three-quarters of an hour he had considered, for perhaps the hundredth time since he had come to the age of discretion, what exactly three lives between a man and a title stood for. Lord Talgarth was old and gouty; Archie was not married, and showed no signs of it; and Frank well, Frank was always adventurous and always in trouble.
And Lord Talgarth could not live for ever; and Archie would do the right thing, even if his father didn't. It was after half-past four before he looked up at a glint of white and saw Jenny standing at the drawing-room window. She stood there an instant with a letter in her hand; then she stepped over the low sill and came towards him across the grass, serene and dignified and graceful.
He disapproved deeply, of course, of Frank's change of religion but he disapproved with that same part of him that appreciated Lord Talgarth. It seemed to him that Catholicism, in his daughter's future husband, was a defect of the same kind as would be a wooden leg or an unpleasant habit of sniffing a drawback, yet not insuperable. He would be considerably relieved if it could be cured.
He swallowed in his throat once or twice, and seemed to taste something with his lips, as his manner was. "This is terrible!" said the Dean. "Had you any idea " "I knew he was going some time to-day," said Jack, "and understood that you knew too." "But I had no idea " "You did telegraph, didn't you, sir?" "I certainly telegraphed. Yes; to Lord Talgarth. It was my duty. But " "Well; he spotted it.
She did so very adroitly. "Mr. Jack came over to see me," she said, "and I thought I couldn't entertain him better than by bringing him up to see you. You haven't such a thing as a cigarette, Lord Talgarth?" He felt about in his pockets, drew out a case and pushed it across the table. "Thanks," said Jenny; and then, without the faintest change of tone: "We've some news of Frank at last."
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