"How much money have you, in plain English?" she asked.
"Buy an estate, for one thing," he replied. "Fortunately, I am very fond of shooting and riding, so I suppose I shall amuse myself."
"Are those your only resources?" she enquired, with a faint smile.
"Come, this gets more interesting! Any lady in your mind yet?"
"None whatever," he assured her, with almost exaggerated firmness.
"You'd better give yourself a few years first and then let me choose for you," she suggested. "I know just the type--unless you change."
"Because," she said, eying him penetratively, "there is at present something bottled up in you. I do not know what it is, and if I asked you wouldn't tell me, but you're not quite your natural self, whatever that may be. Is it, I wonder, the result of that twenty years' struggle of yours? Perhaps you have really lost the capacity for generous life, Mr. Thain."
"Trust me, then, and tell me your secret sorrow?" she suggested. "I could be a very good friend, Mr. Thain, if friends amuse you."
"I have lived under a shadow," he confessed. "I am sorry, but I cannot tell you much about it. But in a sense you are right. Life for me will begin after the accomplishment of a certain purpose."
"No, it isn't that," he assured her. "It happens to be something of which I could not give you even the smallest hint."
"Well, I don't see how you are going to get on with it down at Broomleys," she observed. "What a horrid person you are to go there at all! You might as well bury yourself. You have the wealth of a Monte Cristo and you take a furnished villa--for that's all it is! Perhaps you are waiting till the mortgages fall in, to buy Mandeleys? Or did my warning come too late and is Letitia the attraction?"
He was conscious of her close observation, but he gave no sign.
"I have seen nothing of Lady Letitia," he said, "but even if she were content to accept my four millions as a compensation for my other disadvantages, it would make no difference."
"Any entanglements on the other side?" she asked airily.
The Duchess finished her lobster and leaned back in her chair. Through her tiny platinum lorgnette she looked around the room for several moments. Then a little abruptly she turned again to him.