"No, Sir Noel, it isn't the same thing at all. I came here on my own business, with which my father has nothing to do. His lease is safe enough, being promised; but I want the uplands, with a patch of good shooting-ground, which no man living will have the right to carry a gun over without my leave."
"Anything else?" questioned Sir Noel, with quiet irony, smiling in spite of himself.
"Yes, Sir Noel, there is something else," rejoined the young man, kindling into his natural audacity. "I want a house built on the place. No thatched cottage or low-roofed farm-house, but the kind of house a gentleman should live in, who shoots over his own land, for which he is expected to pay neither rent nor tithes."
"That is, you wish me to give you a handsome property on which you can live like a gentleman? Do I understand your very modest request aright?"
"Not all of it. I haven't done yet."
"Indeed! Pray, go on."
"There isn't land enough out of lease to keep a gentleman, whose wife will have all the taste of a lady, being educated as the chief friend and associate of Sir Noel Hurst's ward. So I make it a condition that some fair income in money should be secured on the property."
"A condition! You—"
"Yes, Sir Noel, it has come to that. I make conditions, and you grant them."
Sir Noel's derisive smile deepened into a gentle laugh.