Alec Osborn was the man who, since Lord Walderhurst's becoming a widower, had lived in the gradually strengthening belief that the chances were that it would be his enormous luck to inherit the title and estates of the present Marquis of Walderhurst.

He was not a very near relation, but he was the next of kin.

He was a young man and a strong one, and Walderhurst was fifty-four and could not be called robust.

His medical man did not consider him a particularly good life, though he was not often ill.
"He's not the kind of chap who lives to be a hundred and fifty.

I'll say that for him," Alec Osborn had said at mess after dinner had made him careless of speech, and he had grinned not too pleasantly when he uttered the words.