‘I’ve no doubt you will. By the way, treat the old gentleman kindly. He’s terribly cut up at having to sell. “My dear island,” he writes, “is second to my dead son’s honour, and to nothing else.” His son, you know, Lord Wheatley, was a bad lot, a very bad lot indeed.’
‘He left a heap of unpaid debts, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, gambling debts. He spent his time knocking about Paris and London with his cousin Constantine—by no means an improving companion, if report speaks truly. And your money is to pay the debts, you know.’
‘Poor old chap,’ said I. I sympathised with him in the loss of his island.
‘Here’s the house, you see,’ said Mason, turning to the map and dismissing the sorrows of the old lord of Neopalia. ‘About the middle of the island, nearly a thousand feet above the sea. I’m afraid it’s a tumble-down old place, and will swallow a lot of money without looking much better for the dose. To put it into repair for the reception of the future Lady Wheatley would cost—’
‘The future Lady Wheatley says she won’t go there on any account,’ I interrupted.
‘But, my very dear lord,’ cried he, aghast, ‘if she won’t—’
‘She won’t, and there’s an end of it, Mr Mason. Well, good day. I’m to have possession in a month?’
‘In a month to the very day—on the 7th of May.’