“Yes?” he said, looking up at her.

“I am anxious, Blight,” she answered.  “Anxious about Percy.”

“So am I, my love,” he responded gravely.  “I fear that to-morrow”—­he consulted a leather pocket-book—­“no, the day after to-morrow, something may happen to him.  I have an uneasy feeling.  It may be that I am superstitious.  Yet something tells me that in the Book of Fate the names of Percy and Bridlington”—­he consulted his diary again—­“yes, Bridlington; the names, as I was saying, of—­”

She interrupted him with an impatient gesture.

“You misunderstand me,” she said.  “That is not why I am anxious.  I am anxious because of something I have just learnt about Percy.  I am afraid he is going to be—­”

“Troublesome?” suggested Lord Blight.

She nodded.

“I have learnt to-day,” she explained, “that he has a horror of high places.”

“You mean that on the cliffs of, as it might be, Bridlington some sudden unbridled terror may cause him to hurl himself—­”

“You will never get him to the cliffs of Bridlington.  He can’t even look out of a first-floor window.  He won’t walk up the gentlest slope.  That is why he is always playing with the lawn-mower.”

The Earl frowned and tapped on his desk with a penholder.

“This is very grave news, Gertie,” he said.  “How is it that the boy comes to have this unmanly weakness?”

“It seems he has always had it.”

“He should have been taken in hand.  Even now perhaps it is not too late.  It is our duty to wean him from these womanish apprehensions.”

“Too late.  Unless you carried him up there in a sack—?”

“No, no,” protested the Earl vigorously.  “My dear, the seventeenth Earl of Blight carrying a sack!  Impossible!”

For a little while there was silence while they brooded over the tragic news.

“Perhaps,” said the Countess at last, “there are other ways.  It may be that Percy is fond of fishing.”

Lord Blight shifted uncomfortably in his seat.  When he spoke it was with a curiously apologetic air.

“I am afraid, my dear,” he said, “that you will think me foolish.  No doubt I am.  You must put it down to the artistic temperament.  But I tell you quite candidly that it is as impossible for me to lose Percy in a boating accident as it would be for—­shall I say?—­Sargent to appear as ‘Hamlet’ or a violinist to wish to exhibit at the Royal Academy.  One has one’s art, one’s medium of expression.  It is at the top of the high cliff with an open view of the sea that I express myself best.  Also,” he added with some heat, “I feel strongly that what was good enough for Percy’s father, ten brothers, three half-brothers, not to mention his cousin, should be good enough for Percy.”

The Countess of Blight moved sadly from the room.

“Well,” she said as she stopped for a moment at the door, “we must hope for the best.  Perhaps Percy will overcome this aversion in time.  You might talk seriously to him to-morrow about it.”