"I think she has had an uncommonly hard time, that she wants nothing but what is reasonable, and that if she threw you off the scent, Sir Wilfrid, with regard to Warkworth, she was quite within her rights. You probably deserved it."
He threw up his head with a quick gesture of challenge. Sir Wilfrid shrugged his shoulders.
"I vow I didn't," he murmured. "However, that's all right. What do you do with yourself down in Essex, Jacob?"
The lines of the young man's attitude showed a sudden unconscious relief from tension. He threw himself back in his chair.
"Well, it's a big estate. There's plenty to do."
"Yes. There's an agent's house--a small one--in one of the villages."
"How do you amuse yourself? Plenty of shooting, I suppose?"
"Too much. I can't do with more than a certain amount."
"Oh yes," said the young man, indifferently. "There's a fair links."
"I like 'bossing' the village," said Delafield, with a laugh. "It pleases one's vanity. That's about all there is to it."
"What, clubs and temperance, that kind of thing? Can you take any real interest in the people?"
"Well, yes," he said, at last, as though he grudged the admission. "There's nothing else to take an interest in, is there? By-the-way"--he jumped up--"I think I'll bid you good-night, for I've got to go down to-morrow in a hurry. I must be off by the first train in the morning."
"Oh, it's only a wretched old man--that two beasts of women have put into the workhouse infirmary against his will. I only heard it to-night. I must go and get him out."
He looked round for his gloves and stick.
"Because it's an infernal shame!" said the other, shortly. "He's an old laborer who'd saved quite a lot of money. He kept it in his cottage, and the other day it was all stolen by a tramp. He has lived with these two women--his sister-in-law and her daughter--for years and years. As long as he had money to leave, nothing was too good for him. The shock half killed him, and now that he's a pauper these two harpies will have nothing to say to nursing him and looking after him. He told me the other day he thought they'd force him into the infirmary. I didn't believe it. But while I've been away they've gone and done it."
Delafield hesitated. "Well, then, I suppose, he can come to my place till I can find some decent woman to put him with."