Miltoun saw that the old man's thin sallow cheeks had flushed to a deep orange between his snow-white whiskers.
“I have looked forward to this day,” he stammered, “ever since I knew your lordship—twenty-eight years. It is the beginning.”
“Or the end, Clifton.”
The old man's face fell in a look of deep and concerned astonishment.
“No, no,” he said; “with your antecedents, never.”
Miltoun took his hand.
“Sorry, Clifton—didn't mean to shock you.”
And for a minute neither spoke, looking at their clasped hands as if surprised.
“Would your lordship like a bath—breakfast is still at eight. I can procure you a razor.”
When Miltoun entered the breakfast room, his grandmother, with a copy of the Times in her hands, was seated before a grape fruit, which, with a shredded wheat biscuit, constituted her first meal. Her appearance hardly warranted Barbara's description of 'terribly well'; in truth she looked a little white, as if she had been feeling the heat. But there was no lack of animation in her little steel-grey eyes, nor of decision in her manner.