“But you must have had the card,” Laura persisted.
“Never heard a word of it!” repeated his lordship, who had by this time shaken hands with everyone in the room. When the company was not too large he made a rule of doing this, thereby obviating the ill results of a bad memory, and earning considerable popularity. “Archdeacon, you are looking very well,” he continued.
“I think I may say the same of you,” answered the clerical dignitary. “You have had good sport?”
“Capital! capital!” replied the peer in his jerky way. “But it won’t last my time! In two years there will not be a head of buffalo in the States! By the way, I saw your nephew.”
“My nephew!” echoed the archdeacon.
“Yes. Had him up to dinner in Kansas city. A good fellow—a very good fellow. He put me up to one or two things worth knowing.”
“But, Lord Dynmore, you must be thinking of some one else!” replied the archdeacon in a fretful tone. “It could not be my nephew: I have not a nephew out there.”
“No?” replied the earl. “Then it must have been the dean’s. Or perhaps it was old Canon Frampton’s—I am not sure now. But he was a good fellow, an excellent fellow!” And my lord looked round and wagged his head knowingly.
The archdeacon’s niece, a young lady who had not seen the peer before, nor indeed any peers, and who consequently was busy making a study of him, looked astonished. Not so the others who knew him and his ways. It was popularly believed that Lord Dynmore could keep two things, and two only, in his mind—the head of game he had killed in each and every year since he first carried a gun, and the amount of his annual income from the time of the property coming to him.
“There have been changes in the parish since you were here last,” said Mrs. Hammond, deftly intervening. She saw that the archdeacon looked a little put out. “Poor Mr. Williams is gone.”