“Exactly; the sort of thing which can’t be allowed in a semi-royal house. The men in whom it appeared have generally gone to the bad, I believe, and the women become dévotes, after experiences which proved how wise their family were in refusing to listen to their wishes. It doesn’t seem to have struck the family that it would have been cheaper, and saved a good deal of scandal, to allow the delinquents to resign their rank, and settle down in private life with the objects of their affections. Their domestic squabbles would have served as awful warnings to the next generation. Perhaps that is the secret of the Grand-Duke’s yielding now.”
“Cyril!” Lord Caerleon turned and looked fixedly at his brother. “I hope there’s no morganatic foolery about this business? That I won’t stand.”
“Certainly not. Our Plantagenet blood, which your Radical friends think so lightly of except when they want you to push their Bills in Parliament, has stood us in good stead here, as I have often found before. But I own I never expected to be grateful for poor old O’Malachy’s descent from Irish kings. It was a happy thought of his to have that elaborate pedigree drawn out, though I believe it was the only thing he had to leave Nadia at his death, wasn’t it? I must have it copied to take back with me, though I remembered enough of it to quiet the Grand-Duke’s apprehensions as to Usk’s mother’s possessing the regulation number of quarterings. But it is a curious thing that you, the most typical Englishman I know, should apparently be doomed to associate with foreigners. You have a foreign wife, so have I, and now everything is conspiring to provide you with a foreign daughter-in-law.”
Lord Caerleon growled impatiently. “It doesn’t seem to have struck any one to ask how Usk and his wife are to live,” he said. “Has the Princess any money?”
“In Germany she is regarded as something of an heiress, and her fortune undoubtedly looks rather imposing reckoned in marks. I should say she would have about eight hundred a-year—pounds, I mean.”
“Even with what I can give Usk, it’ll be precious little to support such a lot of grandeur upon. They won’t have much margin.”
“She is sure to be a good housekeeper. All German girls are. By the bye, what about that new railway which was to pass Llandiarmid and open up the hill district? Is it still on the tapis?”
“Rather. But Nadia and I both felt that we ought not to run up the price of the land, as the line is so much needed.”
“You didn’t tell the Company that, I hope? Don’t, pray, feel that you must love your neighbour better than yourself. Let them make the first offer. You may be sure they won’t propose to give more than the land is worth, but you certainly ought to get enough out of them to increase Usk’s allowance to something a little more in accordance with his position.”
In the meantime, Lady Caerleon had intercepted her son in the hall, and drawn him aside into the library.