rida
disappearing down the walk round a clump of syringas. "Very like the
duke. And you saw he admitted some sort of relationship, though he
didn't like to dwell upon it. You may be sure he's a by-blow of the
family somehow. One of the Bertrams, perhaps the old duke who was out
in the Crimea, may have formed an attachment for one of these Ingledew
girls--the cobbler's sisters: I dare say they were no better in their
conduct than they ought to be--and this may be the consequence."

"I'm afraid the old duke was a man of loose life and doubtful
conversation," the Dean put in, with a tone of professional
disapprobation for the inevitable transgressions of the great and the
high-placed. "He didn't seem to set the example he ought to have done to
his poorer brethren."

"Oh, he was a thorough old rip, the duke, if it comes to that," General
Claviger responded, twirling his white moustache. "And so's the present
man--a rip of the first water. They're a regular bad lot, the Bertrams,
root and stock. They never set an example of anything to anybody--bar
horse-breeding,--as far as I'm aware; and even at that their trainers
have always fairly cheated 'em."

"The present duke's a most exemplary churchman," the Dean interposed,
with Christian charity for a nobleman of position. "He gave us a couple
of thousand last year for the cathedral restoration fund."

"And that would account," Philip put in, returning abruptly to the
previous question, which had been exercising him meanwhile, "for the
peculiarly distinguished air of birth and breeding this man has about
him." For Philip respected a duke from the bottom of his heart, and
cherished the common Britannic delusion that a man who has been elevated
to that highest degree in our barbaric rank-system must acquire at the
same time a nobler type of physique and countenance, exactly as a Jew
changes his Semitic features for the European shape on conversion and
baptism.

"Oh, dear, no," the General answered in his most decided voice. "The
Bertrams were never much to look at in any way: and as for the old duke,
he was as insignificant a little monster of red-haired ugliness as ever
you'd see in a day's march anywhere. If he hadn't been a duke, with
a rent-roll of forty odd thousand a year, he'd never have got that
beautiful Lady Camilla to consent to marry him. But, bless you,
women 'll do anything for the strawberry leaves. It isn't from the
Bertrams this man gets his good looks. It i