"Of course," said Claude. "I looked into it, as a matter of form, on Cripps's return; though his word was really quite sufficient. Well, he had copies of the certificate of Jack's birth, and of that of my uncle's marriage, besides proof positive that Jack was Jack. And that was good enough for me." "And for me too," said Lady Caroline, dropping his arm. "He is a dear fellow; I hardly know which is greater, my regard for him or my sympathy with you!" And her Ladyship marched upstairs. Meantime the agent had led Jack aside on the terrace. "I know who sent that letter," said he. "I had my suspicions all along, and I recognised the disguised hand in a moment. It was Matthew Hunt." "Well?" said Jack. "Well, it was meant merely as an annoyance: a petty revenge for the handsome thrashing you gave the fellow six weeks ago--I wish I'd seen it! But that's not the point. The point is that I think I could bring it home to the brute; and I want your Grace to let me try." "I can't. What's the good? Leave bad alone; we should only make it worse." "Then mayn't I raise the rent of the Lower Farm?" "No; not yet, at any rate. I mean to give the fellow a chance." "And an invitation for the twentieth too?" "Certainly; he's a tenant, or his father is; we can't possibly leave them out." "Very well; your Grace knows best." And the agent went his way. CHAPTER X "DEAD NUTS" It was three o'clock in the early morning of the twentieth of August. A single jet of gas, lighting a torch in the mailed hand of a life-size man-at-arms, burnt audibly in the silent hall; making the worst of each lugubrious feature, like a match struck in a cavern. And Claude Lafont was sitting up alone, in the Poet's Corner, at work upon his birthday offering to Olivia Sellwood. At three, however, it was finished in the rough. The poet then stretched his fingers, took a clean sheet of paper, and started upon the fair copy in his prettiest hand. It began-- "What songs have I to sing you? What tales have I to tell?" And there it stuck, as though these questions were indeed unanswerable; the fact being, there was another still to come, which, however, involved an execrable couplet as it stood. Claude twisted it about for half-an-hour; realised its gratuitous badness; tried not to ask this inane question at all, hunted his rhyming dictionary up and down, and found he must; and finally, with a prayer that it might impose upon Olivia, and another for forgiveness from the Muse, finished his first stanza with-- "What garlands can I bring you From Fancy's fairest dell? Before the world grew old, dear, The lute was lightlier strung; Now all the tales are told, dear, And all the songs are sung."