“Frid’s going on the stage.”

“Yah!” said Lord Wutherwood. “Was that display she treated us to just now a sample? Showin’ her legs and droppin’ about in other people’s scarves like a dyin’ duck in a thunderstorm!”

Roberta felt Frid go rigid with hatred. Stephen and Colin thrust their fists into their mouths. Patch snorted and was savagely nudged by Henry.

“…I may tell you, Charles, that I’m plaguely hard pressed myself. Deepacres nearly kills me keepin’ it up. I’m taxed up to the gullet. Looks as if I’ll have to put down the London house. You don’t know the calls there are on me in—well, in my position. When I remember what it’ll end in I sometimes wonder why the devil I take the trouble.”

“What do you mean, Gabriel?"

“I’ve no boy of my own.”

“No.”

“And to be frank with you I don’t imagine Deepacres is likely to survive the treatment of my heirs.”

“You mean Henry.”

“Oh you’ll outlive me, no doubt,” said Lord Wutherwood.

“Then you mean me?”

“Put it baldly, I mean the pair of you.”

There was a long pause. Roberta heard the fire in the next room settle down in the grate. She heard the breathing of the young Lampreys and the flurried ticking of a carriage-clock on the dining-room mantelpiece. When Lord Charles at last broke the silence, Robert felt her companions stir a little as though something for which they had waited was about to appear. Lord Charles’s voice had changed. It was at once gentler and more decisive.

“I think,” he said, “that I can promise you neither Henry nor I will do much harm to Deepacres. We might possibly care to let other people share its amenities occasionally. That’s all.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was thinking of your regard for Deepacres and wondering if after all it amounts to very much. As you say, one day it will be Henry’s. Yet you are content to let him go down with the rest of us.”

“If he’s got any guts he’ll make his way.”

“I hope he will. I almost believe I am glad to go bankrupt without your aid, Gabriel. I’ve had to ask you for money. No doubt you would say I’ve come begging for money. You choose to refuse me. But please don’t plead poverty. You could perfectly well afford to help me but you are a miserly fellow and you choose not to do so. It is not a matter of principle with you—I could respect that—it is just plain reluctance to give away money. I hoped that your vanity and snobbishness, for you’re a hell of a snob, would turn the balance. I was wrong. You will go away bathed in the vapour of conscious rectitude. I doubt if you have ever in your life been guilty of a foolish generous action. Everything you have said about us is true; we have dribbled money away. But we’ve given something with it. Imogen and the children have got gaiety and warmth of heart and charm; over-rated qualities perhaps, but they are generous qualities. Indeed there is nothing ungenerous about my undisciplined children. They give something to almost everybody they meet. Perhaps they cheat a little and trade a little on their charm but I don’t think that matters nearly so much as being tight-lipped monsters of behaviourism. They are full of what I dare to call loving-kindness, Gabriel, and that’s a commodity I don’t expect you to understand or applaud.”