’I have met him in “the world.”  His son Lord Randolph, too, I saw once at Court at Peterhof, and once again at the Winter Palace of the Tsar.  I noticed in their great stature, shaggy heads of hair, ears of a very peculiar conformation, and a certain aggressiveness of demeanour—­a strong likeness between father and son.’

I had brought with me a bundle of old newspapers, and comparing these as I went on, I proceeded to lay the incidents before him.

‘The father,’ I said, ’held, as you know, high office in a late Administration, and was one of our big luminaries in politics; he has also been President of the Council of several learned societies, and author of a book on Modern Ethics.  His son was rapidly rising to eminence in the corps diplomatique, and lately (though, strictly speaking, unebenbuertig) contracted an affiance with the Prinzessin Charlotte Mariana Natalia of Morgen-ueppigen, a lady with a strain of indubitable Hohenzollern blood in her royal veins.  The Orven family is a very old and distinguished one, though—­especially in modern days—­far from wealthy.  However, some little time after Randolph had become engaged to this royal lady, the father insured his life for immense sums in various offices both in England and America, and the reproach of poverty is now swept from the race.  Six months ago, almost simultaneously, both father and son resigned their various positions en bloc.  But all this, of course, I am telling you on the assumption that you have not already read it in the papers.’

‘A modern newspaper,’ he said, ’being what it mostly is, is the one thing insupportable to me at present.  Believe me, I never see one.’

’Well, then, Lord Pharanx, as I said, threw up his posts in the fulness of his vigour, and retired to one of his country seats.  A good many years ago, he and Randolph had a terrible row over some trifle, and, with the implacability that distinguishes their race, had not since exchanged a word.  But some little time after the retirement of the father, a message was despatched by him to the son, who was then in India.  Considered as the first step in the rapprochement of this proud and selfish pair of beings, it was an altogether remarkable message, and was subsequently deposed to in evidence by a telegraph official; it ran: 

’"Return.  The beginning of the end is come.” Whereupon Randolph did return, and in three months from the date of his landing in England, Lord Pharanx was dead.’

‘Murdered?’

A certain something in the tone in which this word was uttered by Zaleski puzzled me.  It left me uncertain whether he had addressed to me an exclamation of conviction, or a simple question.  I must have looked this feeling, for he said at once: 

’I could easily, from your manner, surmise as much, you know.  Perhaps I might even have foretold it, years ago.’

‘Foretold—­what?  Not the murder of Lord Pharanx?’