Possessor of all this,—and it is but the barest epitome,—the duke was twenty-three years of age, had no near relations, and was just finishing his university career at Oxford.
Everything that the human mind can wish for was his; there was hardly anything in the world, worthy or unworthy, that he could not have by asking for it.
The duke was an undergraduate of St. Paul's College, Oxford. Much smaller than Christ Church, Magdalen, or New College, St. Paul's is, nevertheless, the richest and most aristocratic foundation in the university. It was a preserve of the peerage; no poor men could afford to enter at Paul's, and it was even more difficult for the sons of rich vulgarians to do so.
On one dull, cold morning at the end of the October term the duke came out of his bedroom into the smaller of his two sitting rooms. It was about ten o'clock. He had cut both early chapel or its alternative roll-call—necessities from which even dukes are not exempt if they wish to keep their terms.
The duke wore an old Norfolk jacket and a pair of grey flannel trousers. His feet were thrust into a pair of red leather bath slippers. He was about five feet ten in height, somewhat sturdily built, and deliberate in his movements. His head was thickly covered with very dark red hair. The eyes were grey, and with a certain calm and impassivity about them—the calm of one so highly placed that nothing can easily affect him; one sees it in the eyes of kings and queens. The nose was aquiline, and thin at the nostrils, the nose of an aristocrat; the mouth was large, and pleasant in expression, though by no means always genial. There was, in short, something Olympian about this young man, an air, a manner, an aroma of slight aloofness, a consciousness of his position. It was not aggressive or pronounced, but it was indubitably there.
In the majority of colleges at Oxford undergraduates have only two rooms. In Paul's, more particularly in what were known as the new buildings, men had three, a bedroom, a dining-room or small sitting-room, in which breakfast and lunch were taken, and a larger sitting-room.
The duke came out of his bedroom into the smaller room. It was panelled in white throughout. Let into the panels here and there were first impressions of famous coloured mezzotints by Raphael Smith, Valentine Green, and other masters. They had been brought from the portfolios at Paddington House, and each one was worth three hundred pounds.
The chairs of this room were upholstered in red leather—a true vermilion, and not the ordinary crimson—which went admirably with the white walls and the Persian carpet, brick-dust and peacock blue colour, from Teheran. A glowing fire of cedar logs sent a cheerful warmth into the room, and the flames were reflected in the china and silver of a small round table prepared for breakfast.
Although it was November, there was a great silver dish of fruit, nectarines, and strawberries, grapes and peaches, all produced in the new electric forcing houses which had been installed at the duke's place at Fakenham. There was no apparatus for tea or coffee. In some things the duke was a little unusual. He never drank tea or coffee, but took a glass of thin white wine from Valperga. The tall yellow bottle stood on the table now, and by its side was a fragile glass of gold and purple, blown in Venice three hundred years ago.
The duke crossed the room and the larger one that opened out of it. He pushed open the swing door—the heavy outer "oak" lay flat against the wall—and shouted down the staircase for his "scout."