ry's Persian exile. Sir Wilfrid had been an
intimate friend of his dead father, Lord Hubert, and on very friendly
terms with his lethargic, good-natured mother. She, by-the-way, was
still alive, and living in London with a daughter. He must go and
see them.

As for Jacob, Sir Wilfrid had cherished a particular weakness for him
in the Eton-jacket stage, and later on, indeed, when the lad enjoyed a
brief moment of glory in the Eton eleven. But at Oxford, to Sir
Wilfrid's thinking, he had suffered eclipse--had become a somewhat
heavy, apathetic, pseudo-cynical youth, displaying his mother's inertia
without her good temper, too slack to keep up his cricket, too slack to
work for the honor schools, at no time without friends, but an enigma to
most of them, and, apparently, something of a burden to himself.

And now, out of that ugly slough, a man had somehow emerged, in whom Sir
Wilfrid, who was well acquainted with the race, discerned the stirring
of all sorts of strong inherited things, formless still, but struggling
to expression.

"He looked at me just now, when I talked of his being duke, as his
father would sometimes look."

His father? Hubert Delafield had been an obstinate, dare-devil, heroic
sort of fellow, who had lost his life in the Chudleigh salmon river
trying to save a gillie who had missed his footing. A man much
hated--and much beloved; capable of the most contradictory actions. He
had married his wife for money, would often boast of it, and would, none
the less, give away his last farthing recklessly, passionately, if he
were asked for it, in some way that touched his feelings. Able, too;
though not so able as the great Duke, his father.

"Hubert Delafield was never _happy_, that I can remember," thought
Wilfrid Bury, as he sat over his fire, "and this chap has the same
expression. That woman in Bruton Street would never do for him--apart
from all the other unsuitability. He ought to find something sweet and
restful. And yet I don't know. The Delafields are a discontented lot. If
you plague them, they are inclined to love you. They want something hard
to get their teeth in. How the old Duke adored his termagant of a wife!"

* * * * *

It was late on Sunday afternoon before Sir Wilfrid was able to present
himself in Lady Henry's drawing-room; and when he arrived there, he
found plenty of other people in possession, and had to wait for
his chance.

Lady Henry received