Old Foster came up to dine with me, as per invitation. He wasn't what you'd call exciting, but he was amusing. He'd got some interesting things to talk about, and assisted me in cramming up family details at a rate of which he had no notion. The style in which he took it for granted that there was no deception this time was to me a cause of perpetual surprise. He was a long-headed man, and, in a general way, if you'd wanted to get on his blind side, you'd have had to get up early. But Reggie and Howarth had put his nose out of joint. They'd given him to understand that he was to have the kick because his conduct during my fifteen years of absence hadn't suited their convenience. No man likes to have the Order of the Boot as a reward for his fidelity. My re-appearance meant his triumph over his enemies. His appreciation of that fact I rather think tended to blunt his faculties of observation. In the first flush of his joy he was perhaps naturally unwilling to spoil the situation by any show of impertinent curiosity. At the same time let me hasten to add that his opinion of the Marquis of Twickenham didn't seem to be much higher than Miss Desmond's. He didn't say so in so many words, but it was easy to see that morally and mentally he didn't rate his lordship very high. It was painful to me to reflect that I'd come back to a family whose good opinion of me I should have to level up; if there was any of it to level. Because, so far as I could gather, there wasn't any one anywhere who thought anything of the Marquis of Twickenham at all. For instance, when I asked in a casual sort of way, as the conversation seemed to lag: 'And how are all my old friends?' Foster looked at me curiously out of the corners of his eyes; then down at his glass. There was a dryness in his tone as he answered, 'I didn't know your lordship had any.' Now that wasn't a pleasant answer to receive. The Marquis of Twickenham ought to have some friends. What made it worse was the way in which he said it. However I dissembled my emotions. 'Not one?' 'Whom would your lordship have called a friend of yours?' Although there was the suggestion of a sneer, which I resented, it was an inquiry which I was quite unable to answer. I wanted all the information to come from him. I endeavoured to cap his sneer with another. 'Well, if it comes to that, I don't know that there was any one who owed me money.' 'I should imagine that there was not.' Directly he said that, I knew that I had blundered--that, in fact, it had been only too notorious that the owing was all the other way. Presently he added something which did not tend to sweeten my temper. 'By the way, my lord, it is only right that I should tell you--since I should not be doing my duty were I to withhold the information--that there are certain matters in which your lordship was concerned which have not been forgotten--one in particular which your lordship will probably bear in mind.'