Nettlebed, who might have been considered by some to be rather too elderly a valet for such a young man, began to bustle about, scolding fondly as he divested his master of his coat, and shot-belt, and grey cloth waistcoat. Like nearly everyone else who waited upon the Duke, he had previously been employed by the Duke’s father, and considered himself privileged to speak his mind to his master whenever he was out of earshot of other, less important, members of the household, before whom he invariably maintained the Duke’s dignity in a manner that daunted the Duke far more than the affectionate bullying he employed in private.

He said now, as he laid aside the shot-belt: “I wonder that my lord should not have said something to your Grace, if he noticed you was wearing this nasty, low belt, more fit for a poacher, one would have thought, than for a Gentleman, let alone one that was born, as the saying is, in the Purple. But, there! tell your Grace till Domesday  you’ll never mend your ways! And why would you not take a loader, pray, not to mention Padbury? I can tell your Grace he was quite put about to think you should be off without him, and very likely needing a beater as well.”

“No, I didn’t need a beater,” said the Duke, sitting down to allow Nettlebed to pull off his boots. “And as for my shot-belt, I daresay you may consider it a very vulgar appendage, but it spares my pockets, and is, I think, as quick a way of loading as any that I know.”

“If you had taken a loader with you, as was befitting, your Grace would not have needed any such,” said Nettlebed severely. “I could see his lordship was not best pleased.”

“I am sure he was not displeased for any such cause,” responded the Duke, walking towards the washstand, and lifting the towel from the ewer. “He is a great advocate for a man’s being able to do everything for himself that may come in his way.”

“That,” said Nettlebed, frustrating the Duke’s attempt to pick up the ewer, “is as may be, your Grace.” He poured the water into the basin, and removed the towel from the Duke’s hand. “But when his lordship takes a gun out, he has always his loader, and very likely a couple of beaters besides, for he is one as knows what is due to his position.”

“Well, if I do not know what isdue to mine I am sure it is not for want of being told,” sighed the Duke. “I think it would have been very pleasant to have been born one of my own tenants, sometimes.”

“Born one of your Grace’s own tenants!” ejaculated Nettlebed, in an astonished tone.

The Duke took the towel, and began to wipe his wet face with it. “Not one of those who are obliged to live in Thatch End Cottages, of course,” he said reflectively.

“Thatch End Cottages!”

“At Rufford.”

“I do not know what your Grace can be meaning!”

“They are for ever complaining of them. I daresay they should all be pulled down. In fact, I am sure of it, for I have seen them.”

“Seen them, your Grace?” said Nettlebed, quite shocked. “I am sure I do not know when you can have done so!”

“When we were in Yorkshire, I rode over,” replied the Duke tranquilly.

“Now that,” said Nettlebed, in a displeased way, “is just what your Grace should not be doing! It is Mr. Scriven who should attend to such matters, as I am sure he is willing and able to do, let alone he has his clerks to be running about the country for him!”

“Only he does not attend to it,” said the Duke, sitting down before his dressing-table.

Nettlebed handed him his neckcloth. “Then your Grace may depend upon it there is nothing as needs attending to,” he said.

“You remind me very much of uncle,” remarked the Duke.

Nettlebed shook his head at him, but said: “Well, and I’ll be bound his lordship has told your Grace there isn’t a better agent than Mr. Scriven in the length and breadth of the land.”

“Oh, yes!” said the Duke. “Nothing could exceed his care for my interests.”

“Well, and what more could your Grace desire?”

“I think it would be very agreeable if he cared for my wishes.”

A slightly weary note in his master’s quiet voice made Nettlebed say with a roughness that imperfectly concealed his affection: “Now, your Grace, I see what it is! You have tired yourself out, carrying that heavy game-bag, and your gun, and you’re in a fit of the dismals! If Mr. Scriven don’t seem always to care for your wishes, it’s because your Grace is young yet, and don’t know the ways of tenants, nor what’s best for the estate.”

“Very true,” said the Duke, in a colourless voice.

Nettlebed helped him to put on his coat. “Your Grace’s honoured father had every confidence in Mr. Scriven, that I do know,” he said.

“Oh, yes!” said the Duke.

Feeling that his master was still unconvinced, Nettlebed began to recite the numerous virtues of the agent-in-chief, but after a few moments the Duke interrupted him, saying: “Well, never mind! Have we company to-night?”

“No, your Grace, you will be quite alone.”

“It sounds delightful, but I am afraid it is untrue.”

“No, no, your Grace, it is just as I tell you! You will find no one below but my lord, and my lady, and Mr. Romsey, and Miss Scamblesby!” Nettlebed assured him.

The Duke smiled, but refrained from making any remark. He submitted to having his coat smoothed across his shoulders, accepted a clean handkerchief, and moved towards the door. Nettlebed opened this for him, and nodded to an individual hovering in the hall outside, who at once withdrew, apparently to spread the news of the Duke’s coming. He was the Groom of the Chambers, and although more modern households might have abolished this office, at Sale Park a pomp belonging to the previous century was rigidly adhered to, and the groom continued to hold his post. During the long period of the Duke’s minority he had had little scope for his talents, but he was now hopeful of seeing the great house once more full of distinguished guests, all with their exacting personal servants, and their quite incompatible fads and fancies, driving a lesser man to suicide, but affording Mr. Turvey an exquisite enjoyment.

The Duke walked down the stairs, and crossed a vast, marble-paved hall to the double doors that led into the gallery. Here it had been the custom of the Family to assemble before dinner since the Duke’s grandfather had re-rebuilt the mansion. As the gallery was over a hundred foot long, it had sometimes seemed to the Duke that some smaller apartment might be a preferable assembly room on any but Public Days, but a mild suggestion made to this effect had been greeted by his uncle with such disapproval that with his usual docility he had abandoned any hope of making a change.

Two liveried footmen, who appeared to have been trying to impersonate wax effigies, suddenly sprang to life, and flung open the doors; the Duke dwarfed by their height and magnificence, passed between them into the gallery.

Since September was drawing to an end, and the evenings were already a little chilly, a log-fire had been kindled in the grate at one end of the gallery. Lord Lionel Ware was standing before it, not precisely with his watch in his hand, but presenting the appearance of one who had but that moment restored the timepiece to his pocket. Beside him, and making a praiseworthy if not entirely successful attempt to divert his mind from the lateness of the hour, was the Reverend Oswald Romsey, once tutor to the Duke, now his Chaplain, and engaged in the intervals of his not very arduous duties in writing a learned commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. On a straw-coloured brocade sofa, wholly shielded from the fire’s warmth by her husband’s stalwart form, was disposed the Duke’s aunt, a lady fashioned in a generous mould which the current mode of high waists and narrow, skirts could not have been said to have flattered; and sitting primly upright in a chair suitably withdrawn from the intimate circle was Miss Scamblesby, a spinster of uncertain age and nebulous relationship, who was always referred to by Lady Lionel as “my cousin,” and had been an inmate of Sale Park for as long as the Duke could remember, performing the duties of a lady-in-waiting. As Lady Lionel was extremely kind-hearted, she was not in the least overworked, or browbeaten, the only ills she had to endure being her ladyship’s very boring conversation, and his lordship’s snubs, which last, however, were dealt out so impartially to every member of the household as to make her feel herself to be quite one of the family.

But the Duke, who had, his uncle frequently told him, too much sensibility, could not rid himself of the notion that Miss Scamblesby’s position was an unhappy one, and he never neglected to bestow on her a distinguishing degree of attention, or to acknowledge a relationship which did not, in fact, exist, by addressing her as Cousin Amelia. When his uncle pointed out to him, not in a carping spirit, but as one who liked accuracy, that being only some kind of a third cousin to Lady Lionel her connection with the Ware family was of the most remote order, he merely smiled, and slid out of a possible argument in a manner rendered perfect by years of practice.

As he walked down the gallery, he smiled at her, and enquired after the headache she had complained of earlier in the day. While she blushed, thanked, and disclaimed, Lord Lionel crushingly remarked that he did not know why people should have headaches, since he himself had never suffered such an ill in his life; and Mr. Romsey pleased nobody by saying: “Ah, my lord Duke has a fellow-feeling, I daresay! I am sure no one has suffered more from an affliction we more hardy mortals are exempt from!”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Lord Lionel, who very much disliked to have his nephew’s delicacy of constitution mentioned by anyone other than himself.

Mr. Romsey’s well-meaning if unfortunate remark had the effect of arousing Lady Lionel from her customary lethargy, and she began to enumerate, with a surprising degree of animation, all the more shocking headaches her nephew had endured during his sickly boyhood. The Duke bore this patiently, but Lord Lionel pshawed and fidgeted, and finally broke in on a discourse that threatened to be never-ending, saying crossly: “Very well, very well, ma’am, but this is all forgotten now, and we do not wish to be reminding Gilly of it! Were you hedgerow-shooting, my boy? Had you any sport?”

“Three brace of partridges only, and some wood-pigeons, sir,” responded the Duke.

“Very well indeed,” said his uncle approvingly. “I have frequently observed that for all it may not be real game, as we understand it, the wood-pigeon gives some of the hardest shots of all. What shot did you use?”

“Seven,” said the Duke.

This made Lord Lionel shake his head a little, and point out the advantages of a four or a five. His nephew, having listened politely, said that he would grant him an accidental shot at long distance with his heavier shot, but that a well-breeched and properly bored gun would shoot Number Seven better than any other. As the Duke was a very pretty shot, Lord Lionel allowed this to pass with no more than a glancing reference to newfangled fads, and asked him if he had taken one of his Purdeys out.

“No, a Manton,” said the Duke. “I have been trying Joseph Manton’s New Patent Shot.”

“I have bought my shot from Walker and Maltby any time these thirty years,” declared his lordship. “But the old ways will never do for you young men! I suppose you will tell me this New Patent has some particular virtue!”

“I think the shot is more compact, and it is certainly cleaner to handle,” replied the Duke.

“I hope, Gilly, that you did not get your feet wet?” said Lady Lionel. “You know, if you were to take a chill it will go straight to your throat, and I was thinking only the other day that I cannot recall the name of that very obliging physician who recommended electricity. You were only a child, so I daresay you might not remember, but it was very excellent, though your uncle disliked it very much.”

“Does Borrowdale not know that you are ready for dinner?” demanded Lord Lionel loudly. “It will be six o’clock before we sit down to it!”

“There was quite a fashion for electricity at that time,” pursued his wife placidly. “I am sure I know of a dozen persons who took the treatment.”

“It was what the Captain calls all the crack,” said Miss Scamblesby, prefixing her remark with the titter which never failed to irritate his lordship.

Lord Lionel was both fond and proud of his son, but he did not propose to submit to having his words quoted to him, and he immediately said that he had the greatest dislike of cant expressions. Miss Scamblesby’s subsequent confusion was only relieved by the entrance of Borrowdale, who came in at that moment to announce that dinner was served. The Duke then assisted his aunt to rise from the sofa, Miss Scamblesby draped a Paisley shawl round her shoulders, Mr. Romsey handed her her fan and her reticule, and the whole party filed out into the hall, and across it to the dining-saloon.