"£150 a year."
"Ah—that's not much."
"No—but I expect in the next six months to receive royalties on patents to the extent at least of the other £250."
"Very good—expectations do not always materialize. However, those are the conditions. You can go now."
He was moving away when the old man held up a feeble, detaining hand. Carstairs stayed in silence.
"There are other D'Arcys, but no relation to us. I am the last. We were really French, a French noble family—with a strain of Italian running in us too——" He rested again.
Carstairs pondered deeply while the old man paused. Something of the outlines of the features in their deathly pallor seemed familiar to him. He gazed hard at the face as it lay with closed eyes on the pillows, then he asked, speaking slowly. "Do you know a Mrs Darwen?" The resemblance he had traced to the portrait in Mrs Darwen's album.
"Miss Darwen!"
"No; Mrs Darwen, she has one son."
"Exactly. My son. She's Miss Darwen. Do you know him?"