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Updated: June 28, 2025
He had arrived from Africa by the same mail with our agent's letter, and had joined his father at once at Glen-Ellachie. Two days later we received a most polite reply from the opposing interest. It ran after this fashion: "DEAR SIR CHARLES VANDRIFT Thanks for yours of the 20th.
"There, Charles," she cried, handing it to him, "you've let the chance slip. I shall never be happy now! They've gone off with the diamonds." Charles seized the note and read it. Then he passed it on to me. It was short, but final: "Thursday, 6 a.m. "DEAR LADY VANDRIFT Will you kindly excuse our having gone off hurriedly without bidding you good-bye?
"This fellow declares he's Sir Charles Vandrift," he said sulkily. "Though, in fact, there are two of them. And he accuses me of forgery, fraud, and theft, Bertie." The attaché stared hard at us. "This is Sir Charles Vandrift," he replied, after a moment. "I remember hearing him make a speech once at a City dinner. And what charge have you to prefer, Sir Charles, against my cousin?"
They tell us at the inn he's a regular Tartar." I am Sir Charles Vandrift; and I am not a Tartar. If your husband is a man of science I respect and admire him. It is geology that has made me what I am to-day." And he drew himself up proudly. "We owe to it the present development of South African mining."
The Doctor talked most of the time to Lady Vandrift: his discourse was of picture-galleries, which Amelia detests, but in which she thinks it incumbent upon her, as Sir Charles's wife, to affect now and then a cultivated interest. Noblesse oblige; and the walls of Castle Seldon, our place in Ross-shire, are almost covered now with Leaders and with Orchardsons.
"They are excellent paste," Sir Charles observed, handing them back. "It takes a first-rate judge to detect them from the reality. Lady Vandrift has a necklet much the same in character, but composed of genuine stones; and as these are so much like them, and would complete her set, to all outer appearance, I wouldn't mind giving you, say, 10 pounds for the pair of them." Mrs.
But for my part, I felt there was a show of reason in one last taunt which the rascal flung back at us as the boat receded: "Sir Charles Vandrift, we are a pair of rogues. The law protects you. It persecutes me. That's all the difference." That winter in town my respected brother-in-law had little time on his hands to bother himself about trifles like Colonel Clay. A thunderclap burst upon him.
That epithet, "foreign," stung Charles to the quick. No Englishman can admit that he is anywhere a foreigner. "Do you know who I am, sir?" he asked, angrily. "I am Sir Charles Vandrift, of London a member of the English Parliament." "You may be the Prince of Wales," the man answered, "for all I care. You'll get the same treatment as anyone else, in America.
An explanation occurred to us. Was it possible he knew we were guarded and watched? Was he afraid of measuring swords with this trained detective? If so, how had he found it out? I had an inkling, myself but, under all the circumstances, I did not mention it to Charles. It was clear that Césarine intensely disliked this new addition to the Vandrift household.
Assault and battery is not the right way to test whether a citizen's hair is primitive or acquired." "It was an impulse," Charles pleaded; "an instinctive impulse!" "Civilised man restrains his impulses," the doctor answered. "You have lived too long in South Africa, Mr. Porter I mean, Sir Charles Vandrift, if that's the right way to address such a gentleman.
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