"I have always found it so," said Claude, "and I've known her since she was a child."
The two kinsmen, who had been so wide apart a few minutes since, were now more than ever mutually akin. They drew their chairs together; but the touchstone was deep down in either heart.
"You knew her when she was a child!" repeated the Duke in a kind of awe. "Yes; and I daresay, now, you used to play with her, and perhaps take her on your knee, and even pull her hair and kiss her in them old days. Yet there you sit smoking cigarettes!"
His own pipe was out. He was in a reverie. Claude also had his own thoughts.
"The one thing was this," said the Duke at length: "would the old woman and her daughter come to see us up the country?"
Claude was torn two ways. The Towers scheme was no longer his first anxiety. He returned to it by an effort.
"They would," he said. "Lady Caroline told me so. They would come like a shot in August. She said so herself."
"Would you put me up to things in the meantime? Would you be showing me the ropes?"
"The very thing I should like to do, so far as I am able."
"Then we'll start to-morrow—I mean to-day. That settles it. And yet——"