red.

"It is an idyll, the last word in the refining of sensations," Major
Forrest declared. "You give us sybaritic luxury, and in order that we
shall realize it, you provide the background of savagery. In the
Carlton one might dine like this and accept it as a matter of course.
Appreciation is forced upon us by these suggestions of the wilderness
without."

"Not all without, either," Cecil de la Borne remarked, raising his
eyeglass and pointing to the walls. "See where my ancestors frown down
upon us--you can only just distinguish their bare shapes. No De la
Borne has had money enough to have them renovated or even preserved.
They have eaten their way into the canvases, and the canvases into the
very walls. You see the empty spaces, too. A Reynolds and a Gainsboro'
have been cut out from there and sold. I can show you long empty
galleries, pictureless, and without a scrap of furniture. We have
ghosts like rats, rooms where the curtains and tapestries are falling
to pieces from sheer decay. Oh! I can assure you that our primitivism
is not wholly external."

He turned from the Princess, who was not greatly interested, to find
that for once he had succeeded in riveting the attention of the girl,
whose general attitude towards him and the whole world seemed to be one
of barely tolerant indifference.

"I should like to see over your house, Mr. De la Borne," she said. "It
all sounds very interesting."

"I am afraid," he answered, "that your interest would not survive very
long. We have no treasures left, nor anything worth looking at. For
generations the De la Bornes have stripped their house and sold their
lands to hold their own in the world. I am the last of my race, and
there is nothing left for me to sell," he declared, with a momentary
bitterness.

"Hadn't you--a half brother?" the Princess asked.

Cecil hesitated for a moment. He had drifted so easily into the
position of head of the house. It was so natural. He felt that he
filled the place so perfectly.

"I have," he admitted, "but he counts, I am sorry to say, for very
little. You are never likely to come across him--nor any other
civilized person."

There was a subtle indication in his tone of a desire not to pursue the
subject. His guests naturally respected it. There was a moment's
silence. Then Cecil once more leaned forward. He hesitated for a
moment, even after his lips had parted, as though for some reason he
were inclined, after all, to remain