"I'm on the knees of the gods merely." Cluny turned on Sir William.
"It isn't any secret, is it, sir?
He gets the lot, doesn't he ?" Sir William's occasional smile came.
"I fancy there's some condition about the plate, the pictures, and the title; but I do not suppose that matters meanwhile." He spoke half-musingly and with a little unconscious irony, and the boy, vaguely knowing that there was a cross-current somewhere, drifted.
"No, of course not; he can have fun enough without them, can't he ?" Lady Dargan here soothingly broke in, inquiring about Gaston's illness, and showing a tactful concern.

But the nephew persisted: "I say, Belward, Aunt Sophie was cut up no end when she heard of it.

She wouldn't go out to dinner that night at Lord Dunfolly's, and, of course, I didn't go.

And I wanted to; for Delia Gasgoyne was to be there, and she's ripping." Lady Dargan, in spite of herself, blushed, but without confusion, and Gaston adroitly led the conversation otherwhere.

Presently she said that they were to be at their villa in France during the late summer, and if he chanced to be abroad would he come?
He said that he intended to visit his uncle in Paris, but that afterwards he would be glad to visit them for a short time.
She looked astonished.