Her uncle evaded the note of interrogation. "What do the others earn?" he asked.
"I don’t know exactly what Cecil’s salary is," she returned. "He sends every penny home that he can afford; he is in India, you know, and it is a good lot—a couple of hundred, I should imagine. Guy and Gerald have each a hundred a year; Gerald gives up fifty of his, but Guy, who is obliged to dress better, has to keep seventy-five for himself." She paused.
"There is another one, isn’t there?" Mr. Desborough asked.
"Yes, Hugh," the devoted sister continued. "Till lately he had forty, like Teddie, but now he is getting a hundred too."
"I think seventy or eighty. You see, he lives at home."
"How is that?" Mr. Desborough inquired sharply.
"He is a private secretary to Paul Charteris. You have heard of him, I suppose? His ground adjoins ours."
"Paul?" repeated her uncle. "Paul? That was not the name, surely?"
"You are thinking of the father, Philip Charteris," explained Hazel. "He died, years ago; then Vivian died, his eldest son, and now it is Paul."
"So it is Paul now. What is he like?" And Percival Desborough eyed the girl keenly.
"You would like him," she returned with enthusiasm. "You feel you can confide in him. To me he is almost like one of my brothers, only, of course, he is much older. But he appears quite young—somehow you forget his age."
"Oh, he must be thirty," Hazel answered, as one who speaks, with both pity and reverence, of a life well-nigh spent.
Her uncle chuckled amusedly. "Is he bald?" he asked.
"He has got most beautiful thick hair," Hazel returned indignantly.
"By the way," her uncle remarked, "where did you get your dark looks?"
"It is a sort of freak," Hazel rejoined, half apologetically. "It occurs in the family every now and again. Years and years ago there was a Hazel Le Mesurier like me, only very much prettier; there is a portrait of her in the gallery at home, dated 1661, taken of her when she was five years old."
"It is a relief to hear she was prettier," Mr. Desborough said drily. "But about Hugh: what does young Charteris want with a private secretary?"
Hazel opened her eyes. "Oh," she explained, "he has heaps of things to see to and look after. He was saying only the other day that he thinks, if Hugh does not mind, he will get an older man, and let Hugh be assistant secretary."