Lord Lionel looked up from the letter to direct an admonishing frown at him. “Naturally he would do so! It is a very proper letter. You will write your felicitations, of course, and say that you are very well pleased with the connection.”
“But he will not care a button whether I am pleased or not,” objected the Duke, with a touch of impatience.
“Pray do not let me have these odd humours!” begged his lordship irascibly. “One would suppose you do not attend to anything that is said to you, Sale! I have been telling you for ever that you are the head of the family, and must learn to take your place as such, and now you talk rubbishing stuff to me of your uncle’s not caring a button for your approval! If you are so lost to the sense of what is due to your position, you must perceive that he is not! A very pretty letter he has written you: expresses himself just as he ought! I must say, I had not thought he would have contrived such an eligible match for that girl—not but what it is not precisely what I should have cared for myself.”
“No,” agreed Gilly, taking his letter again. “My cousin is not yet seventeen, and I am sure Alfred Thirsk must be forty if he is a day.”
“Well, well, that need not signify!” said Lord Lionel. “The thing is that I have never fancied that brood of Yelverton’s. There is a damned vulgar streak in them all; came into the family when the old man—Yelverton’s father, I mean: you would not recall—married some rich Cit’s heiress. However, it is none of my business!”
The Duke said a little impishly: “Very true, sir, but if it is mine I think I should inform my uncle that I do not like the match. Poor Charlotte! I am sure she cannot wish for it!”
Lord Lionel audibly drew a breath. In the voice of one restraining himself with a strong effort, he said: “You will not, I trust, be guilty of such a piece of impertinence, Sale! Pray, what should a young man of your age know about the matter?”
“But you told me, sir, that I must learn to assert myself,” said the Duke meekly.
“Let me assure you, Gilly, that that kind of nonsense is beyond the line of being pleasing!” said Lord Lionel sternly. “You must be perfectly well aware that this very proper letter of your uncle’s is the merest formality, and not to be taken as an excuse for you to be putting yourself forward in a very unbecoming way! A fine state of affairs it would be if a man of your uncle’s age and experience is to be told how he is to manage his household by a young jackanapes of a nephew! You will write to him as I have directed, and mind you write it fair, and not in one of your scrawls! You had better let me see the letter before it is sealed.”
“Very well, sir,” said the Duke.