At this point Madame fell from grace. It had become obvious to one less alert than she that the lawfully begotten son of the Hon. William Toppys (pronounced Tops), and the Melanesian wife, was the half-caste Twenty-Eighth Baron of Topsham, and that the ancient Family of Toppys was wild about it. So was Gatepath—wild, furious. He gesticulated, his cheeks puffed out. In him was embodied, for Madame to see and laugh over, all the fury of all the Toppyses, male and female. She could not help but laugh—in peals, till the tears came.
Roger Gatepath groaned. "I did think that you, Madame, would refrain from ribaldry. Consider the position of my clients. This horror that is come upon them is not an occasion for laughter."
"I am really awfully sorry," gasped Madame, wiping her eyes. "It must be dreadful for you all. But to a stranger like me, it is frightfully funny."
"You won't think it funny when you hear the rest of my story," growled Gatepath. "But perhaps I had better stop."
"Oh! please don't. I am immensely interested, and thrilled. I want to hear every word. You tell the story so splendidly, Mr. Gatepath, that I should be wild if you stopped now."
Gatepath continued. The sacred fire of vicarious family indignation had been somewhat abated by Madame's laughter, but he warmed up as he proceeded. He was convinced that the gracious Madame Gilbert would share his horror when the tale reached its tragic close. "You may ask how, after 350 years of direct succession, the ancient and honourable Family of Toppys should have failed of heirs—except this half-caste spawn of a Melanesian savage. It is the war that has brought this disaster upon us. The only son of the late Lord Topsham was killed at Ypres early in the war. The two sons of the second brother were in the Flying Corps, and fell with so many other honourable gentlemen in the spring of 1918. Both were killed within a week. Their death was a blow from which Lord Topsham never recovered. His own brothers had both gone before, and the casualties of war had transferred the succession to that coffee-coloured monster in the Torres Straits. Lord Topsham just withered away. I ventured to urge a second marriage, but his lordship had no heart to struggle. Rather than give heirship to the beachcomber's brat I would have married a housemaid by special licence and begat a son though I never lived to see him born."
"It might have been a useless daughter," murmured Madame unkindly.
Gatepath growled.
Madame Gilbert now pulled herself together. Her ribald laughter had sorely weakened her influence over the solicitor of peers and princes, and she felt impelled to regain it. It was now her role to become sympathetically helpful.
"Are you sure, Mr. Gatepath, that you do not make this grievous affair worse by exaggerating it? The Hon. William Toppys was an English gentleman. He went in for the simple life as a beachcomber with a Melanesian wife, but he must have remained a gentleman by instinct. His son may not be so very brown—some half-castes are almost white—and has probably, almost surely, been brought up as a gentleman. Why not make the best of the situation, bring him home, and let me take the boy in hand? I will make of him a cavalier almost worthy to belong to the ancient House of Toppys."