To Sir Bertram Ballaston, Baronet, Ballaston Hall,
Norfolk, England.
Don’t send any money have won hundred milles very bored going Rome with Carruthers to-night shall return within a month.
Gregory.
END OF BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
CHAPTER I
It was in a sense a dinner of celebration at Ballaston Hall in which these four men were concerned, although, with the exception of one guest, it was a family party. At the head of the table sat Sir Bertram; thin, long and hard-jawed, with brilliant dark eyes, almost black, lips and mouth sometimes cruel, sometimes humorous, a famous spendthrift, an occasional libertine, but without a doubt a great sportsman. On his left, Gregory, an almost startling reproduction of his father, but with uncertainties in his face and expression which time as yet had not moulded. Next to him, his uncle, Henry Ballaston; a smaller man, stiff, cold, courtly and formal in speech and manner, with greater capacities for kindliness but entirely devoid of that humorous twitch to the mouth. He wore old-fashioned side whiskers. His dress waistcoat showed less than the usual amount of shirt front, and his tie was almost a stock. On the opposite side of the table sat Mr. Borroughes, the agent to the estates; a mixture of sportsman, man of affairs and sycophant, never altogether at ease with his host and, in consequence, rather overdoing the assumption of such a state. Below the little party was a vast expanse of polished but empty mahogany, for dinner had been served in the great banquetting hall where places had often been laid in the past for as many as sixty guests.
Rawson, the butler, ponderous yet light-footed, emerged from the shadows of the apartment, carrying a second decanter of the port which they had been drinking. He placed it reverently before Sir Bertram, who lifted it first to the light, poured a little into his glass, sipped it and then passed the decanter on to his son.