Letitia came in to see him on the way back from her aunt's tea party. The Marquis carefully made a note of his place and laid down his periodical.
"You found your aunt well, I trust, dear?"
"Oh, she was all right," Letitia replied. "She had an irritating lot of callers there, though."
"The extraordinary habit which people in our rank of life seem to have developed lately for making friends outside their own sphere is making Society very difficult," he declared. "Members of our own family are, I am afraid, amongst the transgressors. Whom did you meet this afternoon?"
Letitia mentioned a few names listlessly.
"Mr. Thain was there, eh? I understood that he was much averse to paying calls."
"He looked as though he had been roped in," Letitia observed, "and aunt was all over herself, apologising to him for having other people there. She wanted to consult him, it seems, about something or other, and she turned him over to me until she was ready."
"And you," the Marquis enquired, with questioning sympathy, "were perhaps bored?"
"Not bored, exactly--rather irritated! I think I am like you, in some respects, father," Letitia went on, smoothing out her gloves. "I prefer to find my intimates within the circle of our own relatives and connections. A person like Mr. Thain in some way disturbs me."
"That," the Marquis regretted, "is unfortunate, as he is likely to be our neighbour at Mandeleys."
"Oh, it is of no consequence," she replied. "I shall never feel the slightest compunction in anything I might do or say to him. If he pays more for Broomleys than it is worth, he has the advantage of our countenance, which I imagine, to a person in his position, makes the bargain equal. Mr. Thain does not seem to me to be one of those men who would part with anything unless he got some return."
"Money, nowadays," the Marquis reflected, pressing the tips of his fingers together, "is a marvellously revitalising influence. People whose social position is almost, if not quite equal to our own, have even taken it into the family through marriage."
Letitia's very charming mouth twitched. Her lips parted, and she laughed softly. Nothing amused her more than this extraordinary blindness of her father to actual facts--such, for instance, as the Lees' woollen mills!