“I have.”
“Well, I must say thank God for that, at all events. You will allow me to compliment you on your quickness, my dear Edward. I had hoped that Mrs. Cheviot’s reference to that clock might have passed unnoticed. I should have remembered that you had always a disagreeable trick of fixing upon the very points one would have wished to escape you.”
“I have the memorandum safe,” Carlyon interrupted, “and I collect that you are here to try whether you can induce me to hand it over to you.”
“Quite so,” smiled Francis. “I am persuaded that would be the wisest course to pursue.”
“I shall need to be convinced of that, however.”
“Yes, I was afraid you would, and so I shall have to convince you, in spite of all my efforts—my really painstaking and often distasteful efforts—to obviate the necessity of doing so. Ah, perhaps I should make it plain at once that even though I am susceptible to colds and infinitely prefer cats to dogs I have not been selling information to Bonaparte’s agents. How degrading it is to be obliged tosay so! My interest in this affair is neither personal nor patriotic—you remark, I hope, the example I set you in that admirable virtue we were discussing a moment ago! And yet, am I being perfectly frank when I say my interest is not personal? Let us rather say that I am anxious to avoid a scandal. Somehow I feel reasonably certain that a man of your excellent common sense must be similarly anxious.”
“You are right, but I can be satisfied with nothing less than the whole truth.”
Francis sighed. “Very well, between these four walls, then, let us lay bare the whole truth. As I fancy you have already guessed, my lamentable parent is the somewhat inexpert schemer you have been trying to-unmask.” He paused, but Carlyon only continued to regard him steadily. He sighed again. “One sees why, of course.”
“Does one?”
“Oh, I think so! His fortune was never large, you know, and he has not the least notion of management. That peerage which affords him such satisfaction was unfortunately unaccompanied by a grant that might have enabled, him to have supported his new dignity in the style he thought proper to it. My dear Edward, have you ever seen the enlargements he saw fit to undertake at Bedlington Manor? Quite dreadful, I assure you! I have only to tell you that he had the Regent for his architectural adviser to make it unnecessary for me to say more.” He covered his eyes with one hand and shuddered eloquently. “There is even a Chinese drawing room. You might almost fancy yourself in poor Prinny’s little summer residence at Brighton. The only consolation is that when it is put up for sale, as it assuredly must be, I have not the least doubt of its fetching a fantastic sum. It is just the thing to appeal to some city merchant with social ambitions.”