He shook his head.
"Your Uncle Rupert."
I was not surprised, for I had heard rumours that it might be so. But it seemed very strange when I thought it over. Were we three to meet again? I wondered.
"Yes," my grandfather went on with a shade of sadness in his tone, "I am to be left quite alone again, you see."
"Miss Devereux will be with you, I suppose?"
"Maud! Oh, yes, Maud will be with me. What's come to her I don't know. She's refused Lord Annerley and Captain Bryant, and I don't know how many others, and seems settling down into an old maid. Hugh, I'm getting a nervous old man, I think, but I shall have no peace till you get back again. When I think that if anything happened to you—which God forbid—that dissipated, low young cub of a nephew of mine would be my heir, it makes me feel sick. I'd burn Devereux Court above my head rather than that should be."
"It is not likely that anything will happen to me, grandfather," I said, bitterly. "There is one who should be dearer to you than I, who stands in greater peril."
He shook his head sadly.
"He is nothing to me—nothing. He is your father, Hugh, and I have never blamed you for——"
"And he is your son," I interrupted.