"Yes, between you two. I expect to take by surprise a newly-married pair in their honeymoon, and I find a state of things here which I should never have supposed possible. You ride out alone, and she drives alone. You never go near each other's rooms, and when you are together, you have not half-a-dozen words to say to one another. What does it all mean?"
The younger man had risen now, and was standing opposite his father, but he had not thrown off his sleepy look.
"You seem to have mastered the details thoroughly, sir," said he. "You could hardly have learnt them all in the half-hour we spent together yesterday evening. Have you been questioning the servants?"
"Arthur!" Berkow's anger was breaking forth, but the habit of indulgence towards his son made him overlook this great offence. He forced himself to be calm.
"It appears you are not accustomed up here to the fashionable way of doing things," continued Arthur, quite undisturbed. "Now, in regard to this, we are eminently aristocratic. You know, sir, you are so fond of all that is aristocratic!"
"Leave your jests!" said Berkow, impatiently. "Is it your pleasure, too, that your wife should allow herself to ignore you in a way which is already the talk of the whole place?"
"I leave her free, that is, to do as she likes, just as I intend to do myself."
Berkow started up from his seat
"This is really going too far! Arthur, you are"----
"Not like you, sir!" interrupted the young man. "I, at least, should never have forced a girl into giving her consent by threatening her with her father's recognisances."