"I wish you'd contrive not to want the glass exactly when I do," retorted Mopsy.
"How do you like the French Baron?" asked Dopsy, when a brief silence had restored her equanimity.
"French, indeed! He is no more French than I am. Mr. FitzJesse told me that he was born and brought up in Jersey—that his father was an Irish Major on half-pay, and his mother a circus rider."
"But how does he come by his title—if it is a real title?"
"FitzJesse says the title is right enough. One of his father's ancestors came to the South of Ireland after the revocation of something—a treaty at Nancy—I think he said. He belonged to an old Huguenot family—those people who were massacred in the opera, don't you know—and the title had been allowed to go dead—till this man married a tremendously rich Sheffield cutler's daughter, and bought the old estate in Provence, and got himself enrolled in the French peerage. Romantic, isn't it?"
"Very. What became of the Sheffield cutler's daughter?"
"She drank herself to death two years after her marriage. FitzJesse says they both lived upon brandy, but she hadn't been educated up to it, and it killed her."
"A curious kind of man for Mrs. Tregonell to invite here. Not quite good style."
"Perhaps not—but he's very amusing."
Leonard spent half an hour with his son. The child had escaped from babyhood in the year that had gone. He was now a bright sentient creature, eager to express his thoughts—to gather knowledge—an active, vivacious being, full of health and energy. Whatever duties Christabel had neglected during her husband's absence, the boy had, at least, suffered no neglect. Never had childhood developed under happier conditions. The father could find no fault in the nursery, though there was a vague feeling in his mind that everything was wrong at Mount Royal.