“Louisa,” said Sir Gilbert, “allow me to introduce to you my grandson, Lewis Clare, the only son of my late eldest son, John Alexander Clare, whom I think you met once or twice when he was a youth. Lewis—my cousin, Lady Pell.” Then, a few seconds later, when her ladyship and the young man had shaken hands: “Miss Thursby—my grandson.” The young people contented themselves with a simple bow, after which they each drew back a little way. Then said Sir Gilbert aside to her ladyship: “Of course you have heard that only quite recently was I made aware of the existence of my grandson.” “It would have been impossible for me not to have heard of it. It is the talk of the county—in everybody’s mouth.” “And more than one pretty version of the affair has got into circulation, I do not doubt. Some people have more imagination than they are aware of. Give them but the merest thread of fact, and they will weave out of it a tissue of romance which does credit to their inventive powers, if to nothing else.” “But is not that your own fault in some measure? The central fact of the affair, that you had found your long-lost grandson and had installed him at the Chase, was one which you had evidently no wish to conceal, even had it been in your power to do so. Why, then—— But, really, I have no right to question you in the matter.” “Don’t say that. Why, then, you were about to add, throw any cloak of concealment round the subordinate facts of the case? I will tell you why, my dear Louisa. Simply because, although I have chosen to acknowledge my grandson and to instal him in that position which the world—very mistakenly—regards as his by inalienable right, it by no means follows that there are not circumstances connected with the antecedents and personal history both of himself and his mother which I have no intention, if I can anyhow avoid it, of allowing to become public property. You, however, are in an altogether different position; from you I desire to have no concealments in the affair, and after dinner I will tell you all there is to tell.” It was with a curious mixture of sulkiness and gratification that Luigi took Miss Thursby in to dinner. His sulkiness arose from the fact that in the company of this beautiful girl he felt strangely bashful and out of his element; for once he was possessed by a vivid consciousness of being the very inferior creature that he really was, and it was one of those unsought conclusions which we prefer not to have forced upon us. His gratification arose from the fact that for the first time in his life he found himself in a position to treat a being in every other way so much above him, not merely as his social equal but as his inferior; for one of the parlour-maids who was deeply smitten with Luigi’s good looks, and acted as a sort of house spy for him, had already whispered in his ear that the extremely pretty girl whom Lady Pell had brought with her was nothing more than her ladyship’s companion.