After a touching reference to his old and now lost companion, Aunt Bertha, and to his own loneliness, he went on more lightly: “But Waldo comes over every day from Briarmount when they are ‘in residence,’ and the aforesaid All-Highest herself pays me a state visit once or twice a week. The Queen-Regent expects an Heir-Apparent. Oh, confidently! I think she can’t quite make out how fate, or nature, or the other Deity dared to thwart her, last time! I confess I am hypnotized—I too have no doubt of the event! So, as to that, all is calm and confidence—the third peer of the line is on his way! But is there anything wrong in her outlying dominions? Villa San Carlo, though it sounds like a charming winter palace, doesn’t seem to have been an unqualified success. ‘Rather tiresome down there!’ she said. I asked politely after the cousin. Very well, when she had seen him last, but she really didn’t know what he was doing; it seemed to her that he was taking a very long holiday from business—‘Our works down there are of only secondary importance.’ I remarked that you had written saying how much you were enjoying yourself at Villa San Carlo, and how you regretted being detained in Paris. ‘Oh, he meant to leave us anyhow, I think!’ I fancied somehow that both of you gentleman had incurred the royal displeasure. What have you been up to? Rebellion, _lèse-majesté_, treason? You are bold men if you defy my Lady Dundrannan! Well, she’s probably right in thinking that Cragsfoot is too small for her, and not worth adding to her dominions!” Though the purchase would need some contriving, the price that Waldo’s letter indicated was not an insuperable difficulty, thanks to the value which Sir Ezekiel was now kind enough to put on my services; I could pay it, and keep up the place on a footing of frugal decency when the time came. For the rest, the prospect was attractive. Cragsfoot had always been an integral part of my life; my orphaned childhood had been spent there. If it passed to a stranger, I should feel as it were dug up by the roots. If I did not fall in with the arrangement, pass to a stranger it would; I felt sure of that; the All-Highest had issued her command. “So be it!” I said to myself—half in pleasure, still half in resentment at the Dundrannan fiat, which broke the direct line of the Rillingtons of Cragsfoot. I also made up my mind to obey Sir Paget’s implied invitation as soon as——