Assuredly Lady Ethel must have had a warm heart and a generous nature or the coldness of her exalted parents would have chilled her and rendered her cold likewise.
That she was not the reader will soon perceive.
Thousands of persons envied my Lord and Lady Lackland. Never did their carriage roll through the streets, or their names appear in the paper among the fashionable intelligence, but hundreds exclaimed:
But not one of the envious many knew what they were really envying.
There is a skeleton in every house; there was one ever present in all the great and small houses of Lackland. Sometimes he kept discreetly to his cupboard; at others he stepped boldly out and rattled his bones, and grinned in a manner horrible to see.
Oh, yes, reader, other people besides yourself have a skeleton, and there are some persons unfortunate enough to have two.
If we entered the Grosvenor Square mansion, say on the morning after that memorable little dinner party at Mildmay Park far away in Penruddie, we might perhaps have caught a glimpse of that skeleton starting out of the cupboard.
Lord Lackland was seated at the morocco-lined writing table in his own room, with a few newspapers, a decanter of light wine, and a box of biscuits before him.
The door opened, and a young man, no other than Lord Fitz Plantagenet Boisdale, entered.
There was a flush on his fair face, and a look of doubt and distrustful nervousness in his rather simple blue eyes.
"Good-morning, sir," he said, holding out his hand.
"Good-morning, Fitz," said the earl, extending two fingers and glancing coldly at a chair which stood near the table ready for any visitor on business. "You are ten minutes behind your time."
"I am very sorry, sir," said the boy, for he was little more in years or appearance, "but I'd promised to ride with Ethel this morning, and I forgot it until after I left you, so I went down to the stable to tell Markham to saddle the two bays, and he kept me to talk about that chestnut----"
The earl interrupted what promised to be a lengthy explanatory excuse with his cold, little bow, and glanced at the ormolu timepiece on the table.
"It is of little consequence to me; I am obliged to leave at the half hour to meet an appointment, therefore I shall only be able to give you the time I promised to give you. You wished to speak to me."