"I was beginning to be afraid tea wasn't going to occur at all," said Geoffrey.
Harry Vail appeared to consider this.
"You were wrong then," he said, "and you are on the way to become a sensuous voluptuary."
"On the way?" said Geoffrey. "I have arrived. Ah! and tea is following my excellent example."
The advent of lamps banished the mustering and dispersal of the leaping shadows and threw the two figures seated on either side of the tea table into strong light, and, taken together, into even stronger contrast. The birthright of a good digestion, you would say, had been given to each, and for no mess of pottage had either bartered the clear eye and firm leanness of perfect health; but apart from this, and a certain lithe youthfulness, it would have been hard at first sight even, when resemblances are more obvious than differences, to see a single point of likeness between the two. Geoffrey Langham, that sensuous voluptuary, seemed the seat and being of serene English cheerfulness, and his face, good-looking from its very pleasantness, contrasted strongly with that of the other, which was handsome in spite of a marked and grave reserve, that a stranger might easily have mistaken for sullenness. Indeed, many who might soon have ceased to be strangers had done so; and though Harry Vail had perhaps no enemies, he was in the forlorner condition of having very few friends. Indeed, had he been made to enumerate them, his list would have begun with Geoffrey, and it is doubtful whether it would not also have ended with him.
But these agreeable influences of tea and light seemed to produce a briskening effect on the two, and their talk, which, since they came in, had touched a subject only to dismiss it, settled down into a more marked channel.
"Yes, it is a queer sort of coming-of-age party for me," said Lord Vail, "and it really was good of you to come, Geoffrey. I wonder whether any one has ever come of age in so lonely a manner. I have only one relative in the world who can be called even distantly near. He comes this evening—oh, I told you that."
"Your uncle," said Geoffrey.
"Great-uncle, to be accurate. He is my grandfather's youngest brother, and, what is so odd, he is my heir. One always thinks of heirs as being younger than one's self."
"Cut him off with a shilling," said Geoffrey.