“Who could have guessed that he knew so much about the poor and the East End, and all those social facts and figures?” Lady Belward answered complacently.
“An unusual mind, with a singular taste for history, and yet a deep observation of the present. I don’t know when and how he does it. I really do not know.”
“It is nice to think that Lord Faramond approves of him.”
“Most noticeable. And we have not been a Parliamentary family since the first Charles’s time. And then it was a Gaston. Singular—quite singular! Coincidences of looks and character. Nature plays strange games. Reproduction—reproduction!”
“The Pall Mall Gazette says that he may soon reach the Treasury Bench.”
Sir William was abstracted. He was thinking of that afternoon in Gaston’s bedroom, when his grandson had acted, before Lady Dargan and Cluny Vosse, Sir Gaston’s scene with Buckingham.
“Really, most mysterious, most unaccountable. But it’s one of the virtues of having a descent. When it is most needed, it counts, it counts.”
“Against the half-breed mother!” Lady Belward added.
“Quite so, against the—was it Cree or Blackfoot? I’ve heard him speak of both, but which is in him I do not remember.”
“It is very painful; but, poor fellow, it is not his fault, and we ought to be content.”