“Mechtilde talked to me, I remember, a good deal about those letters of introduction,” the Chancellor reflected aloud. “But Rhaetia is a long cry from England; and letters might be forged. I’ve known such things to be done. Fetch me a big red volume you’ll find on the third shelf from the floor, at the left of the south window. You can’t miss it. It’s ‘Burke’s Peerage.’”
Egon rose with alacrity to obey. He was rather thoughtful, for his brother had put an entirely new and exciting idea into his head.
Presently the red volume was discovered and laid on the desk before the Chancellor, who turned the leaves over until he found the page desired. As his eye fell upon the long line of Mowbrays, his face changed and the bristling brows came together in a grizzled line. Apparently the women were not adventuresses, at least in the ordinary acceptation of the term.
There they were; his square-tipped finger pressed down upon the printed names with a dig that might have signified his disposition toward their representatives.
“The girl’s mother is the widow of Reginald, sixth Baron Mowbray,” the old man muttered half aloud. “Son, Reginald Edward, fifteen years of age. Daughter, Helen Augusta, twenty-eight. Aha! She’s no chicken, this young lady. She ought to be a woman of the world.”
“Twenty-eight!” replied Egon. “I’ll eat my hat if she’s twenty-eight.”
“Doesn’t she look it, by daylight?”
“Not an hour over nineteen. Might be younger. Jove, I was never so surprised to learn a woman’s age! By the by, I heard her telling Baron von Lyndal last night, apropos of our great Rhaetian victory, that she was eleven years old on the day it took place. That would make her about twenty now. When she spoke, I remember she gave a look at her mother, across the room, as though she were frightened. I suppose she was hoping there was no copy of this big red book at Lyndalberg.”
“That thought might have been in her mind,” assented the Chancellor, “or else she—” He left his sentence unfinished, and sat with unseeing eyes fixed in an owlish stare on the open page of Burke.
“I should like to know if you really meant what you said about my marriage a little while ago.” Egon ventured to attract his brother’s attention. “Because if you did—”