"Nothing," replied Junius, returning to his book and blushing. That was bad already, as Harry pointed out later; it would have been so easy, for a person who really knew, to pass it off with some such remark as "I was overcome by the address on that letter. My, but what swells you do correspond with," etc. But the unfortunate Junius could not even be consistent to the rôle of affected ignorance that he had assumed.
"I see you know Sir Giles Fletcher," he said after a while. "I saw that envelope on the table; I couldn't help seeing the address. Is he a friend of yours?"
"Yes," said Harry; "my uncle."
"Oh. Well, I heard a good deal about him last summer from some relations of his ... connections, anyway; the Marquis of Moville ... and his family. We had a shooting-lodge in Scotland, and he had a moor near ours. He came over and shot with us once, and said ours was the best moor in Perthshire. His brother came too; Lord Archibald Carson. He's the one that's connected with your uncle, isn't he?"
"Yes. Married his sister."
"The Marquis is rather a decent fellow," continued Junius languidly. "Do you know him?"
"No," said Harry calmly; "no decent person does. Nor Lord Archibald, either. They're the worst pair of rounders in England. My uncle doesn't even speak to them in the street."
"Oh." Junius' face was a study, but Harry was sitting so that he could not see it, and had to be contented with Trotwood's subsequent account of it. There was silence for a few moments, during which Harry waited with perfect certainty for Junius' next remark.
"Well, of course we didn't know them well, at all. They just came and shot with us once. That's nothing, in Scotland."
Victor Hugo was resumed after this and the translation finished without further incident. The beautiful Junius, however, needed no urging to "stick around" afterward, and sat for an hour or more smoking cigarettes and chatting pleasantly about his acquaintance, carefully culled from the New York social register and the British peerage.