The Captain seemed to resent it. “You may very safely call it a ‘mansion,’ sir, it has twenty-five rooms, exclusive of ball-room, billiard-room, picture-gallery, and the domestic offices, kitchen, laundry, dairy, and quarters for servants, and so forth. The Duciehurst plantation-house is the nearest mansion. It is really a ruin, now, and uninhabited, I suppose, but it was good enough in its day.”
A sudden portentous gravity smote the countenance of Adrian Ducie. Although the risible muscles and ligaments still held the laughing contour, all the mirth was gone out of it. His face was as if stricken into stone, as if he had suddenly beheld the Gorgon Head of trouble. The change was so marked, so momentous, that Colonel Kenwynton, forgetting for the moment whence came the association of ideas, suddenly asked:
“You have the same name as the former owner, Mr. Ducie, though I suppose you don’t hold the title to the mansion?”
“Oh, I hold the title fast enough,” replied Ducie, with his wonted off-hand manner, “though it’s like my ‘title to a mansion in the skies,’ I can’t read it clear.”
Floyd-Rosney’s mood was already lowering enough, but for some reason, not immediately apparent, his averse discontent was fomented by the change of the subject. He paused with his tea-cup poised in his hand. His deep voice weighed more heavily than usual on the silence.
“It seems to me a mis-statement to say that you have a title to the property,—a title is a right. There are certainly some forty years’ adverse possession against any outstanding claim, of which I have never heard.”
Ducie was eyeing Floyd-Rosney with a look at once affronted and amazed. “And where do you derive your information as to my title to Duciehurst?”
“I have no information as to your title to Duciehurst, which is the reason that I could not remain silent when such title was asserted, though the discussion cannot be edifying to this goodly company.” He waved his hand at the rows of breakfasting passengers with an unmirthful smile and his courtesy was so perfunctory as obviously to have no root. “The title is mine, it comes to me within the year from the will of my Uncle Horace Carriton, who held it for forty years. But,” with his sour, condescending smile at the company, “the courts and not the breakfast table are the proper place to assert a right that is not barred by the lapse of time.”
“The remedy may be barred, but not the right,” Ducie retorted angrily.
Captain Disnett’s voice sounded with pacifying intonations. He did not seek to change the subject but to steer it clear of breakers. “I never could understand why Mr. Carriton let the old mansion go to wreck and ruin, fine old place as there is on the river. Though he rented out the lands the house has always remained untenanted.”