A week or two later Hurstmanceaux saw a paragraph in the morning papers which made him throw them hastily aside, leave his breakfast unfinished, and go to his sister’s house in Stanhope Street. Her ladyship was in her bath. “Say I shall return in half an hour. I come on an urgent matter.” Leaving that message with her servants he went to walk away the time in the Park. It was a fine and breezy morning, but Hurstmanceaux, who always hated the town, saw no beauty in the budding elms, or the cycling women, or even in Jack or Boo, who were trotting along on their little black Shetlands. When the time was up he waited restlessly another half hour in his sister’s boudoir, where he felt and looked like a St. Bernard dog shut up in a pen at a show. She at last made her appearance, looking charming, with her hair scarce dry gathered loosely up with a turquoise-studded comb and a morning-gown of cloudy lace and chiffon floating about her; a modern Aphrodite. “You have made your husband a director in the City,” said Hurstmanceaux without preface, almost before she had entered the room. She was prepared for the attack and smiled, rather impertinently. “What does it matter to you, Ronnie?” “A director of a bank!” “’Tisn’t your bank, is it?” “A director of a bank!” he repeated. It seemed to him so monstrous, so shocking that he had no words left. “They won’t let him into the strong-room,” said Cocky’s wife. “It may be rather absurd; but it isn’t more absurd than numbers of other things--than your being asked to be a mayor, for instance.” “If I had accepted I should not have disgraced the mayoralty.” “Cocky won’t disgrace anything. They’ll look after him.” “Who did it?” “Is that your business, dear Ronnie?” “Oh, of course, it was that miserable cad from Dakota, whom you forced through the gates of Otterbourne House.” “If you know, why ask?” “What an insult to us all! What a position to put us in! When everybody’s seen the man at your ball where we all were----!” His indignation and emotion checked his utterance. His sister laughed a little, but she was bored and annoyed. What business was it of his? Why could she not be let alone to arrange these little matters to her own convenience in any ingenious way she chose? “How could you make the duke appear to play such a part?” said Hurstmanceaux. “He is the soul of honor and of proper pride. What have you made him look like? It is the kind of thing that is a disgrace to the country! It is the kind of thing that makes the whole peerage ridiculous and contemptible. Imagine what the Radical press will say! Such scandalous jobbery justifies the worst accusations.” “Don’t read the Radical newspapers then. I shall read them, because they will be so deliciously funny. They are always so amusing about Cocky.” “You have singular notions of amusement. I do not share them.” “I know you don’t. You are always on stilts. You never see the comedy of Cocky.”