“That is Miles Gaspard Nevil John, who fought in the Crusades with Richard Coeur de Lion,” he explained. “He is wearing a suit of armor.” By this time the footman was coughing in the corridor.
“That's English history, I guess,” Tembarom replied. “I'll have to get a history-book and read up about the Crusades.”
He went on farther, and paused with a slightly puzzled expression before a boy in a costume of the period of Charles II.
“Who's this Fauntleroy in the lace collar?” he inquired. “Queer!” he added, as though to himself. “I can't ever have seen him in New York.” And he took a step backward to look again.
“That is Miles Hugo Charles James, who was a page at the court of Charles II. He died at nineteen, and was succeeded by his brother Denzel Maurice John.”
“I feel as if I'd had a dream about him sometime or other,” said Tembarom, and he stood still a few seconds before he passed on. “Perhaps I saw something like him getting out of a carriage to go into the Van Twillers' fancy-dress ball. Seems as if I'd got the whole show shut up in here. And you say they're all my own relations?” Then he laughed. “If they were alive now!” he said. “By jinks!”
His laughter suggested that he was entertained by mental visions. But he did not explain to his companion. His legal adviser was not in the least able to form any opinion of what he would do, how he would be likely to comport himself, when he was left entirely to his own devices. He would not know also, one might be sure, that the county would wait with repressed anxiety to find out. If he had been a minor, he might have been taken in hand, and trained and educated to some extent. But he was not a minor.
On the day of Mr. Palford's departure a thick fog had descended and seemed to enwrap the world in the white wool. Tembarom found it close to his windows when he got up, and he had dressed by the light of tall wax candles, the previous Mr. Temple Barholm having objected to more modern and vulgar methods of illumination.
“I guess this is what you call a London fog,” he said to Pearson.
“No, not exactly the London sort, sir,” Pearson answered. “A London fog is yellow—when it isn't brown or black. It settles on the hands and face. A fog in the country isn't dirty with smoke. It's much less trying, sir.”