“I will call upon Miss Thorpe to favor me with her company later, eh, Uncle?” and Sam bowed and quickly disappeared.
“Sam is a noble-hearted fellow! Ranged the Texas plains a few years, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Harris. “When a lad he was threatened with consumption, and physicians recommended a few years of out-door life in Texas. It cured him, but he became a little fixed in the customs. Sterling fellow, though—great heart—all heart. Be seated,” pointing to the seat which she had previously occupied.
At that moment there appeared descending the piazza steps Mr. Corway, with Hazel and Constance on either side of him.
“Your reason, Corway, for doubting his title of lord?” interrogated Constance.
“I possess no proofs,” replied Corway. “I but express an opinion,” and he discreetly refrained from further utterance on the subject, though his thoughts were insistent on his identity of Lord Beauchamp as Philip Rutley.
“But you must have some grounds even for an opinion,” persisted Constance.
“Well, if he is not a lord,” hazarded Hazel, who, purposely or otherwise, by her joining the discussion, released Mr. Corway from an embarrassing reply, which at that time he was loath to make, “he certainly should be one, for he is such a dear, sweet man, so eminently exact and proper.”
“And so distinguished, don’t-che-know,” finished Mr. Corway, with such peculiarly keen mimicry and smiling abandon as to draw from Hazel a flash of admiration, and from Mrs. Thorpe a ripple of laughter with the remark, “Satire unmasked by Cupid.”
Further conversation was interrupted by Beauchamp himself, who appeared alone, descending the broad piazza steps. “It’s so warm in there I decided to refresh a little in the cool air.”