“Yes, you would.” The duke put the tips of his fingers delicately together. “You are of the kind which in all circumstances is like itself.” He looked about him, taking in the turreted, majestic age and mass of the castle. “You would have been born here. You would have learned to ride your pony down the avenue. You would have gone to Eton and to Oxford. I don’t think you would have learned much, but you would have been decidedly edifying and companionable. You would have had a sense of humor which would have made you popular in society and at court. A young fellow who makes those people laugh holds success in his hand. They want to be made to laugh as much as I do. Good God! how they are obliged to be bored and behave decently under it! You would have seen and known more things to be humorous about than you know now.”
“Would I have been Lord Temple Temple Barholm or something of that sort?” Tembarom asked.
“You would have been the Marquis of Belcarey,” the duke replied, looking him over thoughtfully, “and your name would probably have been Hugh Lawrence Gilbert Henry Charles Adelbert, or words to that effect.”
“A regular six-shooter,” grinned Tembarom. “I should have liked it all right if I hadn’t been born in Brooklyn. But that starts you out in a different way. Do you think, if I’d been born the Marquis of Bel—what’s his name—I should have been on to Palliser’s little song and dance, and had as much fun out of it?”
“On my soul, I believe you would,” the duke answered. “Brooklyn or Stone Hover Castle, I’m hanged if you wouldn’t have been you.”
CHAPTER XXIX
AFTER this came a pause. Each man sat thinking his own thoughts, which, while marked with difference in form, were doubtless subtly alike in the line they followed. During the silence T. Tembarom looked out at the late afternoon shadows lengthening themselves in darkening velvet across the lawns.
At last he said:
“I never told you that I’ve been reading some of the ’steen thousand books in the library. I started it about a month ago. And somehow they’ve got me going.”