“Just what it is meant to be,” Gregory confided. “It typifies material fortune cut adrift from all redeeming inspiration. Material fortune is the one thing which we do not associate with this house.”
“Don’t get gloomy, Greg,” his cousin drawled. “Here comes my beloved sister at last. Let’s have a four. Aren’t you going to play, Uncle Bertram?”
“The elders,” Sir Bertram replied, “are going to watch your prowess this set.”
“A jeer!” Gregory exclaimed. “Don’t ever let my father take advantage of you that way, Miss Endacott. He can give me fifteen and owe fifteen and beat me when he feels like it.”
They trooped back on to the tennis lawn, played, sat about under the cedar trees, talked and gossiped until nearly seven o’clock. Claire excused herself from playing in the last set and found a chair near where Henry Ballaston was seated.
“I haven’t thanked you half enough for this afternoon,” she said gratefully.
“I am afraid you must have found me very prolix,” he rejoined. “You must excuse an old man with one idea.”
“I think the man with one idea,” she answered, “is the most satisfactory person in the world. As a rule he makes something of it.—You spoke this afternoon for a moment of Sir Bertram’s wife. Tell me more about her.”
“My dear, there is not a great deal to tell,” he replied. “She was a little younger than Bertram, very beautiful, and devotedly attached to him. She was the daughter of the Earl of Rutland, who has an estate on the other side of the county. She died when Gregory was born. If she had lived eighteen months longer, she would have inherited a fortune of nearly three quarters of a million pounds. It was very unfortunate.”
“Was Sir Bertram very much in love with her?”