'Although I am unprepared to accept a commission on the terms you
suggest, I may, nevertheless, be able to offer a hint or two that will
prove of service to you. I think I remember the announcement of Lord
Chizelrigg's death. He was somewhat eccentric, was he not?'

'Eccentric?' said the young man, with a slight laugh, seating himself
again--'well, _rather_!'

'I vaguely remember that he was accredited with the possession of
something like twenty thousand acres of land?'

'Twenty-seven thousand, as a matter of fact,' replied my visitor.

'Have you fallen heir to the lands as well as to the title?'

'Oh, yes; the estate was entailed. The old gentleman could not divert
it from me if he would, and I rather suspect that fact must have been
the cause of some worry to him.'

'But surely, my lord, a man who owns, as one might say, a principality
in this wealthy realm of England, cannot be penniless?'

Again the young man laughed.

'Well, no,' he replied, thrusting his hand in his pocket and bringing
to light a few brown coppers, and a white silver piece. 'I possess
enough money to buy some food tonight, but not enough to dine at the
Hotel Cecil. You see, it is like this. I belong to a somewhat ancient
family, various members of whom went the pace, and mortgaged their
acres up to the hilt. I could not raise a further penny on my estates
were I to try my hardest, because at the time the money was lent, land
was much more valuable than it is today. Agricultural depression, and
all that sort of thing, have, if I may put it so, left me a good many
thousands worse off than if I had no land at all. Besides this, during
my late uncle's life, Parliament, on his behalf, intervened once or
twice, allowing him in the first place to cut valuable timber, and in
the second place to sell the pictures of Chizelrigg Chase at
Christie's for figures which make one's mouth water.'

'And what became of the money?' I asked, whereupon once more this
genial nobleman laughed. 'That is exactly what I came up in the lift
to learn if Monsieur Valmont could discover.'

'My lord, you interest me,' I said, quite truly, with an uneasy
apprehension that I should take up his case after all, for I liked the
young man already. His lack of pretence appealed to me, and that
sympathy which is so universal among my countrymen enveloped him, as I
may say, quite independent of my own will.

'My uncle,' went on Lord Chizelrigg, 'was somewhat of an anomaly i