begged.  "I am a little late. My dear Caroline, I am delighted to see you," he went on, raising his sister's fingers to his lips.  "Margaret, I shall make no enquiries about your health!  You are looking wonderfully well today."
The Duchess glanced towards her protégé, who had risen to his feet and stood facing his newly arrived host.  There was a moment's poignant silence.  The two men, for some reason or other, seemed to regard each other with no common interest.
"This is my friend, Mr. David Thain," the Duchess announced, "my brother, the Marquis of Mandeleys.  Mr. Thain is an American, Reginald."
The Marquis shook hands with his guest, a form of welcome in which he seldom indulged.
"Any friend of yours, Caroline," he said quietly, "is very welcome to my house.  Robert," he added, as he took his seat, "they tell me that you were talking rubbish about agriculture in the House last night.  Why do you talk about agriculture?  You know nothing about it.  You are not even, so far as I remember, a landed proprietor."
Sir Robert smiled.
"And therefore, sir, I am unprejudiced."
"No one can talk about land, nowadays, without being prejudiced," his father-in-law rejoined.
"Father," Letitia begged, "do tell us about the case."
The Marquis watched the whiskey and soda with which his glass was being filled.
"The case, my dear," he acknowledged, "has, I am sorry to say, gone against me.  A remarkably ill-informed and unattractive looking person, whom they tell me will presently be Lord Chief Justice, presumed not only to give a decision which was in itself quite absurd, but also refused leave to appeal."
"Sorry to hear that, sir," Sir Robert remarked.  "Cost you a lot of money, too, I'm afraid."
"I believe that it has been an expensive case," the Marquis admitted.  "My lawyer seemed very depressed about it."
"And you mean to say that it's really all over and done with now?" Lady Margaret inquired.
"For the present, it certainly seems so," the Marquis replied.  "I cannot believe, personally, that the laws of my country afford me no relief, under the peculiar circumstances of the case.  According to Mr. Wadham, however, they do not."
"What is it all about, anyway, Reginald?" his sister asked.  "I have heard more than once but I have forgotten.  Whenever I look in the paper for a divorce case, I nearly always see your name against the King, or the King against you, with a person named Vont also interested.  Surely the Vont family have been retainers down at Mandeleys for generations?  I remember one of them perfectly well."
The Marquis cleared his throat.
"The unfortunate circumstances," he said, "are perhaps little known even amongst the members of my own family.  Perhaps it will suffice if I say that, owing to an indiscretion of my uncle and predecessor, the 

 Prev. P 9/218 next