“I’ll sound him about it,” she said.
They had reached the path leading to the gamekeeper’s cottage. Anthony had vaulted over the stile. He had turned and was facing her.
“You are a brick,” he said.
He was looking up at her; she was standing on the cross-bar of the stile. She smiled and held out her hand for him to help her. She had beautiful hands. They were cool and firm, though in consequence of her habit of not wearing gloves, less white and smooth than those of other girls in her position.
He took it, and bending over it kissed it. Neither spoke again till they reached the old man’s cottage.
It was a week later that he received a note from Mr. Mowbray asking him to come to dinner. He found Mr. Mowbray alone. Betty had gone to a party at one of the neighbours. Mr. Mowbray put him next to him on his right, and they talked during the meal. Mowbray asked him questions about his school career and then about his father.
“Funny,” he said, “we were turning out some old papers the other day. Came across your grandfather’s marriage settlement. I suppose you know that the Strong’nth’arms were quite important folk a hundred years ago.”
Anthony had heard about them chiefly from his mother. His father had had no use for them.
Mr. Mowbray was sipping his port.
“My grandfather was a tailor in Sheffield,” he volunteered. He could afford to remember his grandfather. His father had entertained George IV, and his mother had been a personal friend of Queen Caroline. He himself might have been an aristocrat of the first water if manners and appearances stood for lineage.