“Are you sure,” suggested Donal, “that there was not a violin shut up with them? Even if none of them could play, there has been time enough to learn. The sound I heard might have been that of a ghostly violin. Though like that of a stringed instrument, it was different from anything I had ever heard before—except perhaps certain equally inexplicable sounds occasionally heard among the hills.”
They went on talking about the thing for a while, pacing up and down the garden, the sun hot above their heads, the grass cool under their feet.
“It is enough,” said Miss Graeme, with a rather forced laugh, “to make one glad the castle does not go with the title.”
“Why so?” asked Donal.
“Because,” she answered, “were anything to happen to the boys up there, Hector would come in for the title.”
“I’m not of my sister’s mind!” said Mr. Graeme, laughing more genuinely. “A title with nothing to keep it up is a simple misfortune. I certainly should not take out the patent. No wise man would lay claim to a title without the means to make it respected.”
“Have we come to that!” exclaimed Donal. “Must even the old titles of the country be buttressed into respectability with money? Away in quiet places, reading old history books, we peasants are accustomed to think differently. If some millionaire money-lender were to buy the old keep of Arundel castle, you would respect him just as much as the present earl!”
“I would not,” said Mr. Graeme. “I confess you have the better of me.—But is there not a fallacy in your argument?” he added, thinkingly.
“I believe not. If the title is worth nothing without the money, the money must be more than the title!—If I were Lazarus,” Donal went on, “and the inheritor of a title, I would use it, if only for a lesson to Dives up stairs. I scorn to think that honour should wait on the heels of wealth. You may think it is because I am and always shall be a poor man; but if I know myself it is not therefore. At the same time a title is but a trifle; and if you had given any other reason for not using it than homage to Mammon, I should have said nothing.”
“For my part,” said Miss Graeme, “I have no quarrel with riches except that they do not come my way. I should know how to use and not abuse them!”