"I have hit upon a thought which shows how I may still work to some purpose here and not make a place for strangers to enjoy when we are gone," he said. "A Malherb shall have all——"
"You cannot mean that you will forgive your nephews!" cried his wife in amazement.
"'Nephews'! No. Curse the pack of 'em—curs that disgrace the name. They're not even honest. And 'twas not I that quarrelled with them, but they with me. I am fifty-one. In a year I shall be fifty-two, and Grace will be marriageable. Eighteen's a very proper age. My grand-aunt, Sibella, was a famous beauty at sixteen, wedded with the Duke of Sampford on her seventeenth birthday, had a daughter upon her eighteenth, and was a grandmother when she was thirty-seven. By the time Grace is nineteen she will be the mother of a son."
"Good gracious, my love, how you run on!"
"Not at all. I'm simply stating the probable course of nature. A son, I say; and that son comes to us. When the lad is one-and-twenty I shall be but seventy or so. What is that? Nowadays, such a man as I am is merely middle-aged at seventy. We have the lad for our own. He must be given to us. By God, it shall be a condition of the match! And he shall be called Malherb, and shall found a line of 'em here instead of my boy, who is dead and gone. 'Tis but a jump of a generation."
The stars at the window laughed in their courses and tumbled before Mrs. Malherb's eyes. Her husband abounded in fantastic projects, but this scheme was egregious even for him. She felt the futility of it, not the humour. One objection specially beat upon her mother's heart, and that she uttered—
"You couldn't expect Grace to give up her first baby, my dear."
"Why not? Why not? Not to me? Not to her own father? 'Slife! Who should be better able than I to make a man of a young fellow? He would be my personal companion. He would be brought up from the cradle with this place in his eyes. He would understand that he was a Malherb and all that that means. 'Tis a very proper idea and, if the girl's not a fool, she'll be the first to see it. Whether she sees it or not, however, don't matter a button."
"For God's sake say no such thing to her!"
"Am I likely to? Do credit me with some understanding. All the same, it will have to be. My heart's on it. The high traditions of the family—Norcot will assent readily, I have little doubt. I can twist him round my finger."