tter" was vague, and so was the Duke's recollection of the
man who addressed him. If his memory served him rightly, he had met
him in a country house in Somersetshire, and had heard that he was the
acquaintance of the disreputable eldest son. What could a person of that
sort have to say of parochial matters? The Duke considered, and then, in
obedience to a rigorous conscience, decided that one ought, perhaps, to
give him half an hour.

There was that in the intruder's aspect, when he arrived in the
afternoon, which produced somewhat the effect of shock. In the first
place, a man in his unconcealable physical condition had no right to be
out of his bed. Though he plainly refused to admit the fact, his manner
of bearing himself erect, and even with a certain touch of cool swagger,
was, it was evident, achieved only by determined effort. He looked like
a man who had not yet recovered from some evil fever. Since the meeting
in Somersetshire he had aged more than the year warranted. Despite his
obstinate fight with himself it was obvious that he was horribly shaky.
A disagreeable scratch or cut, running from cheek to neck, did not
improve his personal appearance.

He pleased his host no more than he had pleased him at their first
encounter; he, in fact, repelled him strongly, by suggesting a degree
of abnormality of mood which was smoothed over by an attempt at entire
normality of manner. The Duke did not present an approachable front as,
after Anstruthers had taken a chair, he sat and examined him with bright
blue old eyes set deep on either side of a dominant nose and framed over
by white eyebrows. No, Nigel Anstruthers summed him up, it would not be
easy to open the matter with the old fool. He held himself magnificently
aloof, with that lack of modernity in his sense of place which, even at
this late day, sometimes expressed itself here and there in the manner
of the feudal survival.

"I am afraid you have been ill," with rigid civility.

"A man feels rather an outsider in confessing he has let his horse throw
him into a hedge. It was my own fault entirely. I allowed myself to
forget that I was riding a dangerously nervous brute. I was thinking of
a painful and absorbing subject. I was badly bruised and scratched, but
that was all."

"What did your doctor say?"

"That I was in luck not to have broken my neck."

"You had better have a glass of wine," touching a bell. "You do not look
equal to any exertion."

In