Mr. Liversedge smiled approvingly at him. “Exactly so, sir! I fancy I do not err when I say that you stand close to him in the succession to the title, and the prodigious property which appertains to his Grace.”
Not a muscle quivered in the dark face looming above him; the faint, satirical smile still hovered on the Captain’s austere mouth; there was nothing in the lounging pose to warn Mr. Liversedge that the Captain’s every faculty was on the alert. There was a moment’s pause. “Quite close,” drawled Gideon, his eyelids beginning to droop a little over his eyes, in a way which would have put his intimates on their guard. “Sit down, Mr. Liversedge!”
He indicated a chair by the table, in the full light of the oil-lamp which stood on it, and Mr. Liversedge took it, with a word of thanks. He could have wished that the Captain had seen fit to lower his large frame into an opposite chair, but the Captain apparently preferred to prop his shoulders against the high mantelpiece, a little out of the direct beam of the lamp. “Go on, Mr. Liversedge!” he invited cordially.
“His Grace, I further apprehend,” said Mr. Liversedge blandly, “is missing from his residence?”
“As you say,” agreed Gideon.
Mr. Liversedge regarded him soulfully. “What a shocking thing it would be if his Grace were never to return to it!” he said. “His absence must, I am persuaded, be causing his relatives grave disquiet.”
Gideon’s lazy glance dwelled for a thoughtful moment on the strip of sticking-plaster adorning his guest’s brow. Was this the dragon you left for dead, Adolphus? was the silent question in his brain. And just what mischief are you in, my little one? Aloud, he said: “I am sure you are perfectly well-informed on that head, Mr. Liversedge.”
Mr. Liversedge, who had employed his time since his arrival in London in picking up the gleanings of town-scandal, admitted it, but modestly. He then heaved a sigh and said: “One must hope that no accident may have befallen him! Yet how inscrutable are the decrees of Providence, sir! You will have doubtless observed it. There is no knowing what the twists of Fortune may be! Why, I daresay you, Captain Ware,—a worthy scion, I am sure, of a distinguished house!—may never have contemplated the possibility that you might awake one morning to find yourself the heir to your noble relative’s possessions!”
The Captain’s drawl became even more marked. “That, Mr. Liversedge, is a reflection that is bound to intrude upon the mind of a man of ordinary common-sense. Life is, after all, uncertain.”
Mr. Liversedge perceived that his visions were about to be fulfilled. It was pleasant to find that his reading of human character had not been at fault. But he had not seriously supposed that it could be. He smiled approvingly at Gideon, and said: “Yet when one considers that his Grace is a young man, and in the possession of his health and faculties, I daresay anyone would be willing to hazard a large wager against the chances of your becoming second in the line of the succession within—shall we say?—the month!”