“I don’t know; but I heard that Sir Julian once received a letter from him, and returned it unopened. You ought to know whether they receive letters from Australia or not.”
“I never trouble myself about the Montellas’ correspondence; they receive letters from all kinds of places. Besides, Ferdinand may have left Australia. How long ago did it all happen?”
Mrs. Emanuel thought a moment.
“Let me see,” she replied musingly. “It was just after Pearl was born. I remember quite well, because Lady Montella paid me a visit, and I was wearing a pale-blue dressing-gown trimmed with Irish lace. It was the first day I sat up in my room. It must be about eleven years ago. Ferdinand—if he is still alive—will be about thirty.”
“So old?” To Raie thirty seemed like middle age. “What a strange story; it quite fascinates me, and”—there was a touch of excitement in her voice—“why, if there is an elder son, Lionel will not succeed to the title and estate.”
“To the estates, yes; to the title, no. Sir Julian cannot will away the baronetcy, much as he might like to do so. Lionel will never be a baronet unless his step-brother dies.”
“Poor Lal! But I do not think he has much craving for a title; he is not that kind of man. I wonder why Lady Montella has never mentioned her step-son to me?”
The matter gave her food for speculation during the remainder of the day. It seemed so strange that Sir Julian—the mild, unobtrusive Sir Julian—should go to such lengths as to disinherit his own son. The more she thought about the scapegrace the more her heart went out to him, although she knew that her sympathy was probably undeserved. When she returned to the flat she routed out an old family album, and carefully turned over the leaves. There were photographs in abundance of Lady Montella in different positions and dresses, chiefly dating from her early wedded days. There were photographs of Lionel in the various periods of infancy, as well as of the two little children who had died. Raie was deeply interested in them all, but she glanced at them cursorily in her eagerness to find the one she sought. At last her attention was arrested by a carte-de-visite in platinotype of a youth in a golf blazer, club in hand. It had evidently been taken some years ago, and was partially discoloured. The face of the young man was somewhat sensual in character, the mouth weak, but the eyes, on the contrary denoted intellect, and were so like Sir Julian’s that Raie looked at them in doubt. Flicking the dust from the album, she carried it into the study, where Lionel was writing.
“Lal,” she demanded, as he put down his pen, “is this your father when he was a young man?”
Montella glanced at the photograph, then up at the girl.