She was bubbling over with them as it happened, besides, they would keep him off her.
“What are you thinking of doing now?”
“What I have always been thinking of doing and have never done yet, making the result of my face to face encounters with death—and Eternity—of some practical value to the world in general and to myself in particular, by filling my trousers’ pockets, which at this present moment contain one pound six and threepence, and that’s mostly due for beer.”
“Humphrey! Have you heard nothing? Your letters?”
“I never read them. For Heaven’s sake, speak, divulge, I’m ready for anything!”
“Your great-uncle is dead—died last month. Before he went he confessed a heavy sin that had lain for years on his soul, poor dear creature. That great lanky son of his, about whom, as you know, I always had a nasty feeling, as if he were not altogether quite right, as if somehow he was not one of us. This now proves to have been a quite prophetic instinct, he turns out to be—ahem—illegitimate, and you, you, Humphrey, are the heir.”
“I say! It’s beastly hard lines on Tom!”
Strange was quite as staggered with the news, as any other younger son in his condition would have been. It vibrated through and through him, but as one cannot clothe thunder in harmonies any more than one can a tumultuous muddle of sensations in speech in the presence of a woman inclined to gush and stoutness, he swallowed his muddle and was flippant.
“Humphrey!” said Lady Mary with dignity, wondering a little if Humphrey himself were quite right. “This minute you have ten thousand a year, and you, my nephew, are Sir Humphrey Strange.”
“Am I? You’ll be astonished to hear I don’t feel a bit like it, I feel exactly as I did before. Is there any difference to the naked eye, if so, do you mind telling me?”