"And does the young man love art?"
"No. I think his talents are confined to spending money and getting into trouble. But my nephew tells me that he is now going to forswear sack and live cleanly."
"That is what I cannot understand, my lord. I had a cold the other day, a most severe cold. I tell the young man to bring me a cup of sack; he sends to me the butler. I say to him, 'Give me the sack.' He replied to me, 'I cannot do that, sir, it's only his lordship can do that.' What is, then, this precious drink I read of in my Shakespeare—so precious, that your lordship will not trust him to his butler? And now you tell me that your nephew will drink him no more. I never see your lordship drink him. Has, then, your lordship forsworn him too?"
His lordship laughed as he finished his coffee. "No one drinks sack now-a-days, Wolff, and the quotation was merely figurative; while the other sack the butler talked about was but a vulgarism used by his class. You will never get that either, in my lifetime at least."
"I understand it not. But your grand-nephew, the young man, it pleases you that he shall marry?"
"It is indifferent to me, Wolff; if I can only live to fill the vacant wall spaces in the new galleries, I can seriously say, après moi le déluge. But here comes the first arrival."
One of his lordship's close carriages was coming up the great chestnut avenue; Lord Hetton was its sole occupant. As the old butler received him in the hall, with the deference due to his master's son, the sporting nobleman laughingly commiserated him.
"We have neither of us any luck, Russell, as usual," he said. "I thought I had a real good thing this time. As usual, I put you on for a fiver, Russell; as usual, it didn't come off." Lord Hetton was of a frugal mind. He was continually presenting innumerable imaginary fivers to little people. He was always putting them on for them at tremendous odds, but the good things never came off, and the recipients of his favours were never informed of his munificence till after the event.
"I most humbly thank your lordship," replied the butler with an air of profound gratitude, as he chuckled in his sleeve. For the old man too was of a sporting turn. He knew all about Dark Despair, and annually he had carefully laid the odds against Lord Hetton's nomination for the great race.
"The same rooms, I suppose, Russell?"