“The best thing to be hoped is that we never run up against one another again. I might still be tempted to give the Monkey a thrashing! Oh, I forgot—I don’t suppose I shall ever be able to give anybody a thrashing! Sad thought, Julius! Well, there it is—let’s forget ‘em!” A gesture of his sound arm waved Lucinda and her Monkey into oblivion.
So be it. I changed the subject. “Very sad about poor old Frost. Dundrannan, I mean.”
“Yes, poor old boy! For a week or two it was about even betting between him and me—which of us would win out, I mean. Well, I have; and he’s gone. We didn’t half do him justice in the old days. Really a grand man, don’t you think?”
I agreed. Lord Dundrannan—Jonathan Frost—had always filled me with the sort of admiration that a non-stop express inspires; and Sir Paget’s letter had added a pathetic touch to the recollection of him—made him more of a human being, brought him into relation with Something that he did not create; that, in fact, I suppose, created him. Really quite a new aspect of Lord Dundrannan!
“She’s come through it splendidly,” said Waldo.
Waldo laughed. “Look here, old chap, you don’t seem to be up to date. Been in Paraguay or Patagonia, or somewhere, have you? She’s not ‘Miss Nina’—she’s my Lady Dundrannan.”
“Nobody told me that there was a special remainder to her!”
“Well, he’d done wonders. He was old and ill. No son! They could hardly refuse it him, could they? The peerage would have been an empty gift without it.”
“You’ve got it right now, Julius. Of Dundrannan in the county of Perth, and of Briarmount in the county of Devon—to give it its full dignity.”
“We’re all human. I think she is. Besides, she was very fond and proud of her father, and likes to have her share in carrying on his fame.”
“And she has wherewithal to gild the title!”
“Gilt and to spare! But only about a third of what he had. A third to her, a third to public objects, a third to Godfrey Frost. That’s about it—roughly. But business control to Godfrey, I understand.”
He laughed again—just a little reluctantly, I thought. “Not altogether, perhaps. But she accepts it gracefully, and takes it out of the young man by ordering him about! He’s a surprisingly decent young chap; she’ll lick him into shape in no time.”