Christian, observing his celebrated cousin by daylight for the first time, perceived the necessity of revising some of the previous night’s impressions.

Under the illumination of the shaded lamp and the glowing bank of peat on the study hearth, Emanuel in his velvet jacket and slippered ease had seemed a delicately refined creature, of so ethereal a type that life for it outside the atmosphere of books, and of a library’s thought and talk, would be unnatural, or even impossible. With his back to the afternoon sunshine, however, and with rough, light clothes suggesting fresh-air exercise, Emanuel was a different person.

In stature he was a trifle taller than Christian; perhaps he was also something heavier, but what the newcomer noted most about the figure was the wiry vigor of muscular energy indicated in all its lines and movements. There was apparent no trace of any physical resemblance to his father, the massive Lord Julius, and Christian, as this fact occurred to him, remembered what he had heard about the race from which the mother had come. He could not say that Emanuel’s face was like anything which he had thought of as distinctively Jewish. The forehead was both broad and prominent, and at the top, where early baldness exposed the conformation of the skull, there were curious sutural irregularities of surface which attracted attention. The rest of the face was indefinably distinguished in effect, but not so remarkable. Christian thought now that it was a more virile countenance than he had imagined it to be. Vague suggestions of the scholarly dreamer flitted through its expressions now and again, but it was still above all things the face of a man of action.

Christian had said to himself, in that crowded instant of analysis, that he had never seen any Jewish face which at all resembled this of his cousin’s. Yet somewhere he had seen a face so like it!—the memory puzzled and absorbed his mind. The same crisping, silky black-brown hair; the same full line of brow and nose; the same wide-open dark eyes, intently comprehending in their steady gaze—how strangely familiar they were to him! He saw them again in his mind’s eye, and they had the same shadow-casting background of sunlight—only as he looked at the mental picture, this sunlight was fiercer and hotter, and there was a golden, hazy distance of purple-blue sea. Suddenly he laughed aloud, and his brain was alive with recollections.

“I never recognized you last night,” he declared. “Is it not strange that I should have been so blind? But seeing you in the sunlight—ah, I remember you well enough.”

Emanuel smiled too, a little awkwardly. “Of course I was not making any secret of it,” he said. “It would have come up naturally, sooner or later, in the course of talk.”

But Christian had turned to the lady, and was speaking with gay animation. “He it is whom I have so often thought of, for years now, as the ‘mysterious stranger’ of my poor little romance. How long is it ago? Oh, ten years perhaps, since I saw him first. It was at Toulon, and I was walking along the quai in the late afternoon, and he stopped me to ask some question, and we fell to walking together and talking—at first about the old town, then of myself, because he wished it so. A long time passed, and lo! I saw him again. This time he came into Salvator’s little shop at Cannes—it was in the Rue d’Oran—and I was alone, and we talked again—it seems to me for more than an hour. And I wondered always who he could be—because he made me feel that he had friendly thoughts about me. And then, once more—it was a year ago last summer—he met me again, and came and sat beside me on a seat in the Jardin Public, at Nice. It must have been in June, for the season was ended, and it surprised me that he should be there.”

“Oh, yes, I know all about it,” put in Kathleen. “He told me of his seeing you, and what he thought of you, almost as soon as your back was turned. But at that time, of course—things hadn’t happened.”

“Ah, but he wanted to be kind to me, even then,” the young man broke forth, with a glow in his eyes. “I felt that in his tone, the very first time, when I was the young boy at school. Oh, I puzzled my brain very often about this young English gentleman who liked to talk to me. And here is a curious thing, that when the Credit Lyonnais gave me my summons to come to England, it was of him that I thought first of all, and wondered if he had not some part in it. And then I was so dull—I come to his own house, and sit at his own table with him as my cousin, and do not know him at all! It is true that he had no beard then—but none the less I am ashamed.” He spread his hands out and smiled a deprecatory gesture at them both as he added: “But then everything has been upside down in my mind since I came to England. It has been as if I were going up the side of a straight cliff in a funicular railway—my heart throbbing in terror, my brain whirling—afraid to look down, or out, or to realize where I was. But to-day I am happily at the end of the journey, and the good safe ground is well under my feet—and so I am not confused any more, but only very, very glad.”

The elder couple exchanged a frankly delighted smile over the enthusiast’s head. “You take him for a stroll about the place,” said the wife. “Perhaps I will come and find you, later on.”

In obedience to the suggestion, the two men turned, and went off together across the lawn.

Emanuel began speaking at once. “My father,” he said, “has given me a rough outline of what you have seen and heard. In the nature of things, it could not all be pleasant.”

“Oh, I have quite forgotten the unhappy parts,” the young man declared. “I resolved to do that; it would be folly to remember them.”

“They have their uses, though,” persisted the other. “I wanted you to start out with just that impression of the family’s seamy side. We have an immense deal to make up to the people about us, and to humanity in general, have we Torrs. It seemed to me that you could not realize this too early in your experience here. What impressions did Caermere itself make upon you?”

Christian hesitated a little, to give form to his thoughts. “I am imagining it in my mind,” he said at last, slowly, and with extended hands to shape his meaning to the eye, “as a huge canvas, one of the very biggest. As it happens, there is an unpleasant picture on it now, but that can be wiped out, covered over, and then on the vast blank surface a new and splendid picture may be painted—if I have the skill to do it.” He paused, as his companion nodded comprehension of the figure, and then added abruptly: “I have not put the question direct before—but it is really the case that I am to succeed my grandfather—to be duke of Glastonbury, is it not?”

“Yes,” answered Emanuel, gravely. “That is the case.”

“Lord Julius told me to ask you everything,” Christian went on in defense of his curiosity. “But, grand Dieu! there is so much to ask! Shall I be a rich man, also? There are dukes in France who can scarcely give a dinner to a friend—and in Italy who are often in doubt about even their own dinners. I understand that English dukes are different—but it has been said to me that my grandfather, for example, is not a rich man. He would be rich, no doubt, in some other station, but as a duke he is poor. Shall I also be poor?”

Emanuel smiled, more, it seemed, to himself than for the benefit of the young man. With amusing deliberation he took from his pocket a little oblong book with flexible covers. “Have you ever owned a checkbook?” he asked drily.

Christian shook his head.

“Well, this is yours. It came from London this morning. I have written here on the back of the first check, on the part that remains in the book, these figures. They show what the bank holds at your disposal at the present moment.”

Christian took the book, and stared with awe at the figures indicated. “Three thousand pounds! That is to say, seventy-five thousand francs! But—I do not understand. What portion is this of my entire fortune? There is more besides—to come at some future period—n’est ce pas?”

The sum itself had seemed at first glance to be of bewildering dimensions. Soberer second thoughts, however, told him that he had been lifted into a social stratum where such an amount might easily come and go a number of times during one’s life.

“Well,” Emanuel began, hesitating in turn over his phrases, “strictly speaking, you have no fortune at all. This money has been placed to your credit by my father—or if you like, by us both—to put you in a position of independence for the time being. You are quite free to spend it as you like. But—this is a somewhat delicate matter to explain—but we look to you in turn to be more or less guided by us in, say, your mode of life, your choice of associates and—and so on. Don’t think that we wish in the least to hamper your individual freedom. I am sure you will feel that that is not our way. But we have formed very high hopes indeed for your career and—how shall I make you understand?—it rests a good deal with us to say how far the realization of these hopes warrants us in going on. That isn’t plain to you, I see. Well, to put it frankly, you have nothing of your own, but we turn our money over to you because we believe in you. If unhappily—let us suppose the very improbable case—we should find ourselves no longer believing in you, why then we should feel free to reconsider our financial responsibilities towards you. That is stating it very baldly—not at all as I should like to have put it—but it gives you the essence of the situation.”

They had paused, and Christian regarded him with a troubled face. “Then if you come not to like me, or if I make mistakes, you take everything away from me again? I have never heard of a system like that. It seems to place me in a very strange position.”

The youth’s mobile countenance expressed such wistful dejection, as he faltered out these words, that Emanuel hastened to reassure him.

“No, no,” he urged, putting a brotherly hand on his shoulder, “it is the fault entirely of the way I explained it. No one will ever take anything away from you. In all human probability you will live and die a wealthy and powerful nobleman—and perhaps something a good deal more than that. But let me show you the situation in another way. You have seen your grandfather—so I need say little about him. When he had reached the age of fifty or thereabouts he had come to the end of his resources. Since the estates were entailed, nothing could be sold or mortgaged, and debts of all sorts were crowding in upon him and his eldest son, Lord Porlock. They were at their wits’ end to keep going at all; Porlock could not hold his head up in London, much less marry, as he was expected to do. If it had not been for the invention of life insurance, they could hardly have found money to live from week to week. That was in 1858 or ’9, when I was two or three years old. It was then that my father adopted his policy toward the older branch of the family. As you perhaps know, he was a very rich man. He came forward at this juncture, and saved the duke and his household from ruin.”

“That was very noble of him. It is what I should have thought he would do,” interposed Christian. They had begun walking again.

“Oh, I don’t know that noble is quite the word,” said Emanuel. “The element of generosity was not very conspicuous in the transaction. The truth is that the duke and his son were not people that one could be generous to. They had to be bound to a hard-and-fast bargain. They agreed between them to break the entail, so that all the estates could be dealt with as was deemed best, and bound themselves to sell or mortgage nothing except to my father, unless with his consent. He on his side settled seventy thousand pounds on Porlock and his heirs, thus enabling him to marry, and he not only purchased from the duke the Somerset properties, of which this is a part, but he bought up his debts at the sacrifice of a good many thousands of pounds, so that in practice he became his brother’s only creditor. No doubt there was generosity in that—since he cut down the rate of interest to something almost nominal by comparison with the usury that had been going on—but his motive was practical enough. It was to get complete financial mastery of the family estates. Nearly forty years have passed since he began; to-day he holds mortgages on practically every acre. If it were not for the mine near Coalbrook, which latterly yields the duke a certain surplus over the outlay at Caermere, my father would probably own it all outright. Well, you have followed it so far, haven’t you?”

Christian thoughtfully nodded his head. “These are not affairs that I have been brought up to understand,” he commented, “but I think I comprehend. Only this—you speak of your father’s adopted policy; that means he has a purpose—an aim. The lady at the castle—Lady Cressage—spoke to me about this, and I wish—”

“Ah, yes, you met her,” interposed

Emanuel. “I am not sure she was the best fitted to expound our policy to you.”

“Oh, she was very sympathetic,” the young man hastened to insist. “She had the warmest praises for both you and your father. And I could not but feel she wished me well, too.”

Emanuel made no immediate reply, but walked slowly along, revolving silent thoughts, with a far-away, deliberative look in his eyes. When he spoke at last, it was to revert with abruptness to the earlier topic. “The policy, as we are calling it,” he said, &ld............