Whereat Marmaduke smiling, the old man went on serenely. "Never forget, my boy, how to treat women of good character. The other comes naturally, but I'm damned if I ever forgot my manners with a really good woman. And you will find it pays, Duke, it pays. So now have not you got some bit of spice, or an _on dit_ to amuse the old man with? Curse me, but I lead a miserable life here, tied down by this infernal complaint; but I am paying now for the follies and indiscretions of youth. Confound you, Marmaduke, you might think of your poor old father's joints and not rush your fences in that way!" "I beg your pardon, sir," replied Marmaduke, meekly glad of the turn he had given the conversation by deploying the bath-chair into the gravel walk; for, in good truth, he had no great relish for spicy stories. Not that he was a prig, but that he had been born a sportsman, to whom indoor life was dull and irksome. So he welcomed another interruption in the shape of a young man who came hastily down the path to meet them. "Why, I believe it's Peter!" he cried joyously, and the next minute was shaking hands with his young half-brother, the fruit of Lord Drummuir's third but not last marriage; for his wives never lived long, except the first, who had lingered for years, only giving him useless daughters. "Why, Peter, how you've grown!" remarked Marmaduke unnecessarily, seeing he had been away ten years. "So've you--you're a giant beside the rest of us, except Meg! Pitt and I----" The lad pulled himself up sharp. "Well, I say, sir, we must have a rousin' night to celebrate Duke's return!" Marmaduke, looking at the slender, fair-haired youth with a weak mouth and an excited manner, thought he had probably roused too much. Instinctively, therefore, since he had often been drunk himself--it was the fashion of the time--he changed the subject again to one that had come uppermost in the old familiar surroundings. "I say, how about the grouse? Is it to be a good year?" His eyes as he spoke almost yearned over a swelling purpled horizon curve which told where the best moors in that part of Aberdeenshire were to be found. Five minutes after the old lord, still in his bath-chair, was discoursing in the most animated and amiable fashion about sport past and present and to come, while his two sons, one of them sprawling on the lawn, joined in amicably. So amicably that Mdlle. Fantine Le Grand, watching them from her boudoir windows, turned to a man who was lounging in a chair reading the papers, and said-- "This sort of thing won't do, Compton. That young man is too charming." The man to whom she spoke did not look up. He went on reading, as he said-- "You don't often find them too charming, Fan!"