第43章

The voice was hesitating, pleasant, and not quite unfamiliar. The consul looked up, and identified the figure before him as one of the new arrivals that day, whom, in the informal and easy courtesy of the house, he had met with no further introduction than a vague smile. He remembered, too, that the stranger had glanced at him once or twice at dinner, with shy but engaging reserve.

"You must see such a lot of people, and the way things are arranged and settled here everybody expects to look and act like everybody else, don't you know, so you can't tell one chap from another.

Deuced annoying, eh? That's where you Americans are different, and that's why those countrywomen of yours were so charming, don't you know, so original. We were all together on the top of a coach in Scotland, don't you remember? Had such a jolly time in the beastly rain. You didn't catch my name. It's Duncaster."The consul at once recalled his former fellow-traveler. The two men shook hands. The Englishman took a pipe from his smoking-jacket, and drew a chair beside the consul.

"Yes," he continued, comfortably filling his pipe, "the daughter, Miss Kirkby, was awfully good fun; so fresh, so perfectly natural and innocent, don't you know, and yet so extraordinarily sharp and clever. She had some awfully good chaff over that Scotch scenery before those Scotch tourists, do you remember? And it was all so beastly true, too. Perhaps she's with you here?"There was so much unexpected and unaffected interest in the young Englishman's eyes that the consul was quite serious in his regrets that the ladies had gone back to Paris.

"I'd like to have taken them over to Audrey Edge from here. It's no distance by train. I did ask them in Scotland, but I suppose they had something better to do. But you might tell them I've got some sisters there, and that it is an old place and not half bad, don't you know, when you write to them. You might give me their address."The consul did so, and added a few pleasant words regarding their position,--barring the syndicate,--which he had gathered from Custer. Lord Duncaster's look of interest, far from abating, became gently confidential.

"I suppose you must see a good deal of your countrymen in your business, and I suppose, just like Englishmen, they differ, by Jove! Some of them, don't you know, are rather pushing and anxious for position, and all that sort of thing; and some of 'em, like your friends, are quite independent and natural."He stopped, and puffed slowly at his pipe. Presently he took it from his mouth, with a little laugh. "I've a mind to tell you a rather queer experience of mine. It's nothing against your people generally, you know, nor do I fancy it's even an American type; so you won't mind my speaking of it. I've got some property in Scotland,--rather poor stuff you'd call it,--but, by Jove! some Americans have been laying claim to it under some obscure plea of relationship. There might have been something in it, although not all they claim, but my business man, a clever chap up in your place,--perhaps you may have heard of him, Sir James MacFen,--wrote to me that what they really wanted were some ancestral lands with the right to use the family name and privileges. The oddest part of the affair was that the claimant was an impossible sort of lunatic, and the whole thing was run by a syndicate of shrewd Western men. As I don't care for the property, which has only been dropping a lot of money every year for upkeep and litigation, Sir James, who is an awfully far-sighted chap at managing, thought he could effect a compromise, and get rid of the property at a fair valuation. And, by Jove! he did. But what your countrymen can get out of it,--for the shooting isn't half as good as what they can get in their own country,--or what use the privileges are to them, I can't fancy.""I think I know the story," said the consul, eying his fellow-guest attentively; "but if I remember rightly, the young man claimed to be the rightful and only surviving heir."The Englishman rose, and, bending over the hearth, slowly knocked the ashes from his pipe. "That's quite impossible, don't you know.

For," he added, as he stood up in front of the fire in face, figure, and careless repose more decidedly English than ever, "you see my title of Duncaster only came to me through an uncle, but Iam the direct and sole heir of the old family, and the Scotch property. I don't perhaps look like a Scot,--we've been settled in England some time,--but," he continued with an invincible English drawling deliberation, "I--am--really--you--know--what they call The McHulish."