"Well, there isn't much more in any case, except this great barrack of a house. What there is, however, goes to him. And it can hardly be expected that he will marry and have children now."
"How old is he?" asked Geoffrey.
"Something over seventy."
"And after him?"
"The Lord knows! Anybody; the first person you meet if you walk down Piccadilly perhaps; perhaps you, perhaps the prime minister. Honestly, I haven't any idea."
"Marry then, at once," said Geoffrey, "and disappoint the man in the street, and the prime minister, your uncle, and me."
Harry Vail got up and stood with his back to the fire, stretching out his long-fingered hands to the blaze behind him.
"What advice!" he said. "You might as well advise me to have a Greek nose. Some people have it, some do not; it is fate."
"Marriage is a remarkably common fate," remarked Geoffrey, "commoner than a Greek nose. I have seen many married people without it."