"If you wish it, sir, certainly," said Lord Blair, not very joyously. "But I'm afraid I shall bore you dreadfully, you know."
"The boring will be mutual, I have no doubt," said the earl grimly. "I may remind you that we need meet only at dinner."
"That's true," said Lord Blair frankly. "Well, until then, I'll walk round the place."
Then earl inclined his head, and rang the bell which stood at his elbow.
"Lord Leyton will remain here to-night," he said to Larkhall, and that exemplary servant, holding the door open for Lord Blair to pass out, hurried off to tell Mr. Stibbings and Mrs. Hale the extraordinary news that the future earl was to sleep at the house which would some day be his own.
Lord Blair had spent a remarkably bad quarter of an hour; but before he had got half way down the broad staircase, with its carved balustrades and magnificent cross panelling, he began to shake off the effects with that wonderful good-humored carelessness which had lost him nearly all his lands, and won him so many hearts.
He went down the stairs into the hall and looked round him with a smile, as if his interview had been of the pleasantest description; then he lit a cigar and, with his hat on the back of his head, went out into the warm sunshine.
He walked along the terrace and across the lawns, and then as if by instinct found his way to the stables. And be it remarked, and it is worth noting, that he had not—as many a man in his position would have done—given one glance at the magnificent place with the thought that it would some day all be his.
Strange to say, for an heir, he didn't wish the earl dead. Blair Leyton hankered after no man's property, not even his uncle's; whatever sins may have been laid to his charge, he was innocent of that love of money which is the root of all evil.
So without a spark of envy or covetousness or ill-will, he went to the stables and, nodding pleasantly to the head groom, went into the stalls.