and to know whether any one of
those High-Dutch women had got hold of me, Peterborough said: 'Mr.
Beltham, the only lady of whom it could be suspected that my friend Harry
regarded her with more than ordinary admiration was Hereditary-Princess
of one of the ancient princely Houses of Germany.' My grandfather
thereupon said, 'Oh!' pushed the wine, and was stopped.

Peterborough chuckled over this 'Oh!' and the stoppage of further
questions, while acknowledging that the luxury of a pipe would help to
make him more charitable. He enjoyed the Port of his native land, but he
did, likewise, feel the want of one whiff or so of the less restrictive
foreigner's pipe; and he begged me to note the curiosity of our worship
of aristocracy and royalty; and we, who were such slaves to rank, and
such tyrants in our own households,--we Britons were the great sticklers
for freedom! His conclusion was, that we were not logical. We would have
a Throne, which we would not allow the liberty to do anything to make it
worthy of rational veneration: we would have a peerage, of which we were
so jealous that it formed almost an assembly of automatons; we would have
virtuous women, only for them to be pursued by immoral men. Peterborough
feared, he must say, that we were an inconsequent people. His residence
abroad had so far unhinged him; but a pipe would have stopped his
complainings.

Moved, perhaps, by generous wine, in concert with his longing for
tobacco, he dropped an observation of unwonted shrewdness; he said: 'The
squire, my dear Harry, a most honourable and straightforward country
gentleman, and one of our very wealthiest, is still, I would venture to
suggest, an example of old blood that requires--I study race--varying,
modifying, one might venture to say, correcting; and really, a friend
with more privileges than I possess, would or should throw him a hint
that no harm has been done to the family by an intermixture . . . old
blood does occasionally need it--you know I study blood--it becomes too
coarse, or, in some cases, too fine. The study of the mixture of blood is
probably one of our great physical problems.'

Peterborough commended me to gratitude for the imaginative and chivalrous
element bestowed on me by a father that was other than a country squire;
one who could be tolerant of innocent habits, and not of guilty ones--a
further glance at the interdicted pipe. I left him almost whimpering for
it.

The contemplation of the