“I can only be most happy that you were not prepared, for what would I have said for myself, or what would John have said to me, had a life so precious been placed in danger by my indiscretion,” said Lord Frogmore with a bow. He was a little formal in his modes of speech and in his civilities, which had an old school deference about them quite unknown to the new generation. There is nothing easier than to give a dangerous scratch under the cover of that velvet glove of supreme good manners, but it takes a delicate perception to perceive sarcasm, and Letitia did not find it out. Lord Frogmore on his side felt himself much more amused than he had expected by the reception he had met with. He belonged to a class perhaps more frequent nowadays than in former times; the class to which the follies of its fellow creatures is more amusing than anything else that can be met with in the world. The old lord expected to pay a very dull duty visit to his brother, whom he esteemed as a good-hearted blockhead, and the sharp little underbred woman who was his wife. He had scarcely hoped to be amused, even by Letitia, whose little pretentions he believed himself to have fully fathomed and seen through, and he did not expect to find amusement in the society to be found in their house. It was a quite unexpected felicity to be received so unexpectedly by the big bushman with his stories of adventure, and the unexplained family complication coincident with his presence and the evident desire to get rid of him shown by all the house. Mary, too, who was not the governess, and who under her little middle-aged primness was an observer like himself, and saw what he meant when Mrs. John remained quite impervious, interested the old lord. There was something to see and note where he had expected nothing, something to find out in the perfectly _banal_ household. The old gentleman’s little keen eyes quickened and sparkled, and that wonderful interest in human life which is nowhere so strong as among those who have reached its furthest limit, awoke in him with a grateful hope of satisfaction. In the midst of this, which was on the whole agreeable, there was one little prick which had been given quite unintentionally by the most innocent hand, yet which he could not forget, notwithstanding all his philosophy. It was what little Duke had said when he had welcomed his uncle with immediate recognition of what was due to him. “First, there’s you,” Duke had said, “and when you’re dead, papa, and when papa’s dead, me--I’ll be Lord Frogmore some day.” This was quite true and quite innocent, and meant no harm; but Lord Frogmore could not get it out of his mind. He had of course been aware since John Parke was born that he was to be his own successor, heir presumptive, as the peerage said: and of course little Marmaduke was John’s heir--heir apparent, the undoubted hope of the illustrious son of the Parkes. But, still, all the same, it jarred upon the old gentleman.