“The news of the existence and claim of this unknown nephew must have come upon Lord Tremarn as a thunderbolt. His attitude, however, was one of uncompromising incredulity. He refused to believe the story of the marriage, called the whole tale a tissue of falsehoods, and denounced the claimant as a barefaced and impudent impostor. “Two or three months more went by; the public were eagerly awaiting the arrival of this semi-exotic claimant to an English peerage, and sensations, surpassing those of the Tichborne case, were looked forward to with palpitating interest. “But in the romances of real life, it is always the unexpected that happens. The claimant did arrive in London about a year ago. He was alone, friendless, and moneyless, since the £2,000 lay buried somewhere beneath the ruins of the St. Pierre bank. However, he called upon a well-known London solicitor, who advanced him some money and took charge of all the papers relating to his claim. “Philip Le Cheminant then seems to have made up his mind to make a personal appeal to his uncle, trusting apparently in the old adage that ‘blood is thicker than water.’ “As was only to be expected, Lord Tremarn flatly refused to see the claimant, whom he was still denouncing as an impostor. It was by stealth, and by bribing the servants at the Grosvenor Square mansion that the young man at last obtained an interview with his uncle. “Last New Year’s Day he gave James Tovey, Lord Tremarn’s butler, a five-pound note, to introduce him, surreptitiously, into his master’s study. There uncle and nephew at last met face to face. “What happened at that interview nobody knows; was the cry of blood and of justice so convincing that Lord Tremarn dare not resist it? Perhaps. “Anyway, from that moment the new heir-presumptive was installed within his rights. After a single interview with Philip Le Cheminant’s solicitor, Lord Tremarn openly acknowledged the claimant to be his brother Arthur’s only son, and therefore his own nephew and heir. “Nay, more, every one noticed that the proud, bad-tempered old man was as wax in the hands of this newly-found nephew. He seemed even to have withdrawn his affection from the four other young nephews, whom hitherto he had brought up as his own children, and bestowed it all upon his brother Arthur’s son—some people said in compensation for all the wrong that had been done to the boy in the past. “But the scandal around his dead brother’s name had wounded the old man’s pride very deeply, and from this he never recovered. He shut himself away from all his friends, living alone with his newly-found nephew in his gloomy house in Grosvenor Square. The other boys, the eldest of whom, Harold, was just twenty-three, decided very soon to leave a house where they were no longer welcome. They had a small private fortune of their own, from their father and mother; the youngest boy was still at college, two others had made a start in their respective professions.