He would make the journey to Cavil and see the old lord at once. It would mean the eating of much pride; it would choke him; but---- Stay. An alienated relative makes but a treacherous ally. Yet---- Lord Wyntwarde strode up and down the great library at Cavil, where he transacted his business, and all such other like unpleasantnesses, amongst the books he never read, his hands in his breeches pockets; and he laughed harshly. He was just in from riding; and his pink hunting-coat, his breeches and long boots were splashed with mud. Anthony, standing in a window, grimly watched him prowling. The old lord threw back his head as he tramped the floor: “Ho, ho!” he bawled, “friend Anthony! I spoke like the damned minor prophets, after all, hey!... So you come to me!... By the dogs, I said it. But you are three years before my prophecy.... You play the cat and banjo with my dates. You make me too previous.” He turned, clinking his spurs as he trod his heels into the thick carpets. “I saw the cub’s birth in the papers ... seventeen years and a while ago. But, the cast-iron joke of it! that _you_ should come to prevent a marriage with an undesirable. Hoho--ho!... I swore it--I swore it should be so.... Gods! how the world goes round! Round and round and round. And no one grows a peppercorn the wiser.... Not a damn peppercorn. Tshah! _I_ did it. But then I foresaw that all the Wattleses would pour their vast wealth into our coffers--they love to have a lord in the family down by Birmingham. Nevertheless, _I_ married a vicar’s daughter against my father’s will--and she brought forth Ponsonby!... Gods! have you seen the Thing?” Anthony said not a word. The old lord took to his pacing again: “By the dogs, an abortion. He cannot stay on a horse long enough for it to kill him. A horse! Dogs, he hasn’t even the blood of the Wattleses in him--he’d turn giddy on an office-stool unless he were strapped to it. He is the very pick of dancing-masters--he has cast back to the bank-manager, except that he can’t count. There he stands against God’s heaven, a knock-kneed reproach to his Maker.... The nearest thing he gets to a horse is to wear riding-breeches and long boots on the parades of fashionable watering-places. But he has thrown out a virtue we none others have had--he has not gone into opposition to the head of his house. He will be the twenty-sixth in the title, and the other twenty-four have pulled their fathers’ beards. He has promised never to marry without my approval....” He tramped silently for awhile, and burst out again: “And so you think I will refuse to have a word to say to your cub! Well, you are mistaken. But it is on conditions--you understand--on conditions.” Anthony nodded: “I must know the conditions,” he said. “You must? Hoho! still the organizer of victory, eh!” Anthony said nothing.