"Oh no, my dear, he's much more devoted to you," replied Pamela.
"They're such affectionate girls," Lady Grant whispered to Mr. Vibart. "They really do admire each other, and that's so rare in sisters nowadays." Lady Grant always implied by her disapproval of the present that she and all to do with her were survivals of the Golden Age. "And really," she went on in a low voice, "everybody likes them. I know that as a mother I ought not to talk so fondly, but I do believe that they are the most popular girls anywhere."
Mr. Vibart nodded in absent-minded sagacity.
"I never met your uncle, Mr. Vibart," Sir Hector said importantly.
"No, sir, he keeps very much to himself."
"Quite so. Quite so." Sir Hector wanted Vibart to realize that baronets had certain instincts and habits which he, as one of the species, emphasized in his own manner of life. "No, when I get away for a few weeks' rest," he went on, "I like to rest; and as I know that your uncle comes to Spaborough for the same reasons as myself, I haven't disturbed him with a card. A fine name, a fine name! Fourteenth in precedence, I believe? A Jacobean creation? Yes, to be sure." Sir Hector wished that he were a Jacobean creation himself, and he often thought when he saw himself in the glass that he looked like a Jacobean creation. So he did, just as Jacobean furniture in Tottenham Court Road looks very like the real thing.
"My title dies with me," he sighed, "and to me there's always something very sad in the thought of a title's becoming extinct. You, I believe, are the last representative?"
Vibart nodded.
"You ought to marry," said Sir Hector, and though the advice was given by the baronet, it sounded as though it were given by the doctor.
"I certainly must," Vibart agreed lightly. "By the way, you haven't forgotten that to-night's a gala night at the Spa?"