Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/122

 "Quite so, Charlotte." The ducal irritation was growing steadily. "But don't rub it in. That won't help us. Let us think constructively. You see the trouble is that this fellow has a rather democratic outlook."

"Then I'm afraid there's no remedy," said Charlotte, "unless the girls have the brains to help us, which, of course, they haven't."

His Grace became more thunderous. "Let us hope he'll have the good feeling to try to look at things as we do," he said after a rather arid pause.

"I'm not sure that we've a right to expect it," was the frank rejoinder.

"Why not?"

"His branch of the family has no particular cause to be grateful to us."

"Our father gave his father a living, didn't he?" said the Duke sharply.

"Yes, but nothing else—unless it was a day's shooting now and again, which he didn't accept."

"I don't see what else he could have given him."

"An eye ought to have been kept on this young man."

"You can depend upon it, Charlotte, many things would have been ordered differently had there been reason to suppose that this confounded fellow would be next in here. As it is we have to make the best of a sorry business."

"Sorry enough," Charlotte admitted. "There I am with you. But I'll have inquiries made about this chorus girl. And in the meantime, Johnnie, perhaps you will speak to him firmly and quietly without losing your temper."

"And my last word to you, Charlotte," countered his