Their eyes met. The father knew there remained something as yet unspoken behind the reply. He waited. But Ruxton's decision was not yet taken.
"Finished your letters yet?" he enquired from behind a cloud of smoke.
The bright blue eyes surveying him twinkled.
"One more," his father said.
"Go ahead then."
Sir Andrew knew by the tone that ultimately the unspoken word was to come. He glanced down at his papers with a sigh.
"I believe, after all, I shall have to break with some of my old-fashioned habits. It is an awful thing to contemplate at my time of life. I think I must be getting old. The burden of private correspondence begins to weigh. I have always held that a private secretary for such a purpose is waste of money, and the undesirable admission of another into one's private life."
Ruxton stretched out his long legs. His bulk almost completely filled the settle.
"It's hard work for Yorkshire to change its habit. A feature applying pretty generally to the Briton. I only wonder a man of your vast fortune has clung to such habits so long. I, who possess but a twentieth of the fortune you possess, find I cannot do without one."
"But then you are a political man," his father smiled drily.