“You shouldn’t call your aged relatives dotty, Dennis,” he said. “Your mother’s quite right. When I’m as old as your great-grandmamma, which will be in a week or two for time goes so fast, I shall be exceedingly vexed with you if you say I’m dotty. So there, old boy. She probably thought you were dotty when you told her you weren’t me——”
“And then she thought I was Uncle Raymond,” continued Dennis. “That just shews——”
“It just shews that you’re an ugly little devil,” observed Colin. “When you come down to dinner to-night——”
“But I don’t,” said Dennis. “I have supper upstairs——”
“Well, I ask you to come and have dinner with me to-night. Don’t drink too much port like your grandfathers and great-grandfathers.... What was I going to say? Oh, I know. Nip round, like a good boy, to Mr. Douglas’s rooms, and ask him to come to dinner to-night. Say it’s to have the honour of meeting you.”
“He’s probably in the library, isn’t he?” asked Dennis.
“No, he’s probably not. And then come back here, and I’ll have a game of billiards with you.”
Colin waited till Dennis had gone, then turned to Violet.
“How the boy is growing up!” he said. “Was I as big as that at fourteen, darling? He’s a splendid fellow, we ought to congratulate ourselves. He’ll develop swiftly now. How interesting to watch that, eh, dear Violet, and to train and influence him?... You’ve kept him all to yourself hitherto. It’s time that a father’s care——”
She had long feared this moment, and, now that it had come, it roused in her not her womanly motherhood alone but something of the tigress-motherhood that will fight for its young, with any who threatens them, even if he is her own mate.... But it was the woman who spoke first.