“Mother,” exclaimed the Earl in desperation. “You were my father’s choice, and Heaven forbid that I should fail in respect towards a lady whom he honored with his hand. But when you suggest that to bring about this most desirable union, I should wallow, metaphorically, in dirt——”
“It’s pay dirt, Gus,” said the Dowager. “A hundred and thirty thousand a year, my boy!”
“Mother!” cried Lord Beaumaris. “If I brought myself to grovel to such infamy, do you suppose for one moment Halcyon——”
“That Halcyon would tumble to the plot? There are no flies on Halcyon,” said the Dowager, “and you bet he’ll worry through—velvet coat, orange necktie, forehead, curls, and all!”
“Then do I understand,” said Lord Beaumaris helplessly, “that I am to ask him to accept my hospitality in a character that is not his own, and appear at my table in a disguise! The idea is inexpressibly loathsome, and I cannot imagine in what character he could possibly appear.”
“As a painter—of the fashionable fresco brand—engaged if you like to decorate your new ballroom!” put in Alaric in his level expressionless tones.
“But he can’t paint!” said the Dowager. “That’s where we’re going to buckle up and collapse. He can’t paint worth a cent! That takes brain, and Halcyon isn’t overstocked with ’em, I must allow.”
“Get a man who has the brain and the ability to do the work,” said the imperturbable Alaric.
“Deception on deception!” groaned Lord Beaumaris.
“I have the very fellow in my eye,” pursued Alaric: “Remarkable clever A.R.A., and a kinsman of your own. Perhaps you have forgotten him,” he continued, as Lord Beaumaris stiffened with polite inquiry, and the Dowager elevated her handsome and still jetty eyebrows into interrogative arches; “perhaps—it’s equally likely—you never heard of him, but at least you remember his mother, Janetta Bloundle?”