s he still retained, not to
prepare these triumphs, but for the benefit of his heir, for whom he had
no affection but whom he respected as the next incumbent and treated
accordingly, that is to say, as one gentleman treats another.

On this high noon, when the servants had gone, the father sat back and
looked at his son, who, it then occurred to him, astonishingly resembled
his mother. He had the same eyes, too big, too blue; the same lashes,
too long, too dark; the same ears, too small and a trifle too far
forward. In addition he had the same full upper-lip, the same cleft in
the chin, the same features refined almost to the point of degeneracy.
But the ensemble was charming--too charming, as was his voice, which he
had acquired at Oxford where, at the House, he had studied, though what,
except voice culture, one may surmise and never know. Men generally
disliked him and accounted the way he spoke, or the way he looked, the
reason. But what repelled them was probably his aura of which, though
unaware, they were not perhaps unconscious.

His father motioned: "Thank God, you are here. At any moment now we may
be in it and you will have to go. You are not a divinity student and you
cannot be a slacker."

The old man paused and added: "Meanwhile you will have to marry. If
anything should happen to you, there would be but Sally and the
Balaguine brat and I shouldn't like that. God knows why I care, but I
do. There has always been a Paliser here and it is your turn now--which
reminds me. I have made over some property to you. You would have had it
any way, but the transfer will put you on your feet, besides saving the
inheritance tax."

"Thank you. What is it?"

"The Place, the Wall Street and lower Broadway property, that damned
hotel and the opera-box. Jeroloman wrote you about it. Didn't you get
his letter?"

"I may have. I don't know that I read it."

"When you have a moment look in on him. He will tell you where you are."

"And where is that?"

The old man summarised it. Even with the increased cost of matrimony, it
was enough for a Mormon, for a tribe of them. But the young man omitted
to say so. He said nothing.

His father nodded at him. "You think marriage a nuisance. So it is. So
is everything. By Gad, sir, I wish I were well out of it. I go
nowhere--not even to church. I have grown thin through the sheer
nuisance of things. But if nothing happens over there and you don't make
a mess of it, the next tw