"Oh! can't he?" was Colonel Harris's muttered comment.
"At any rate, if I have no influence, he has, and he must exert it and get Uncle Rad down to Algeciras or anywhere he likes so long as it is well south."
Luke paused awhile, his face flushed with this expression of determination which must have caused his pride many a bitter pang. Then he resumed more quietly:
"It's rather humiliating, isn't it, to go to that man as a suppliant?"
"Don't go as a suppliant, my boy. You must insist on your uncle being properly looked after."
Colonel Harris thought all that sort of thing so easy. One always does before one has had a genuine tussle with the unpleasant realities of life; to the good country squire with an assured position, an assured income, assured influence, it seemed very easy indeed to insist. He himself never had to insist; things occurred round him and at his word, as it were, of themselves.
But Louisa, knowing how matters stood, made no suggestion. She knew that Luke would do his best, but that that best was of little avail now; as Philip de Mountford arranged so it would all come about.
Friends and well-wishers could but pray that the intruder was not a bad man, and that he had his uncle's health at heart.
She gave the signal to go, saying simply,
"We mustn't be late for dinner, father, must we?"