“Why do you say this? You are a comparatively young man—not more than fifty-five.”
“I feel a thousand years old; and I often wish that I was dead.”
“I don’t wonder! I should say the same, if I had lived here alone for seven years. How do you kill time?”
“I don’t kill time. Time is killing me. I walk in the garden sometimes, but generally I sit and think. You must be tired, my boy,” as if struck by a sudden thought.
“Well, I am, I must confess. I was at a ball until four o’clock this morning.”
“A ball till four o’clock this morning!” he repeated. “How strange it sounds. It seems the echo of a voice speaking twenty years ago!”
Dinner was served at a small table; a fowl for Mark, some patent food for Major Jervis. The cooking was atrocious, the attendance careless, the appointments splendid, but grimy. It was the same in every department—an extraordinary mixture of squalor and magnificence. It seemed to the indignant young man that these ruffians of servants thought anything good enough for his father.
When Major Jervis’s huka was brought in he looked over at his son and said—
“You smoke, of course?”