“When?” said the Duke sourly.
“He will come round at once.”
The fact was clear that his Grace was not in a mood to receive anyone just then, least of all Sir Dugald Maclean, who at any time was far from being persona gratissima at Bridport House. But after a mental struggle, which if quite short was rather grim, he allowed public policy to override his private feelings.
“I suppose I’d better,” he said with something ominously like a groan of disgust.
II
Even when the decision was taken and Mr. Twalmley had gone to make it known, the Duke was not quite clear in his mind as to why he should submit to such an ordeal. Was it really necessary to see this man? Would any purpose be served by his so doing?
This morning the Duke was in a mood of vacillation, itself the sequel to a night of physical and mental torment. Men and events and Nature’s own self were conspiring against him; the future and the past were alike in their menace; he could see nothing ahead but a vista of anxiety.
Waiting for this man whom he disliked so intensely, he tried at first to fix his mind on the morning’s news, and failed lamentably. For one thing the paper itself was a sinister portent of the times. But there were others, and in the interval of waiting for an unwelcome visitor his Grace reviewed them gloomily.
Albert John had lived to see dark days. At heart a time-server and a cynic, his strongest wish had been to go to the grave in the faith of his fathers. In the beginning none had realized more clearly than he that dukes were not as other men. Born to that convenient dogma, or at least having imbibed it with the milk of infancy, it was in the very marrow of his bones. But now, it would seem, the Time Spirit had overtaken the order to which he belonged.
Twin portents of that fact had hovered all night round his pillow. First came the business of Jack and the lady of his choice, who at close quarters had proved to be so much more than his Grace had bargained for; then there was the minor yet entirely vexing complication of Muriel and her Berserker of a Radical.