Though she asked the question with the good intention of drawing her host into the conversation, Mrs. Temple made it a point to notice the effort with which he rallied himself to meet her words.

“What am I going to do?” he repeated, absently.  “Oh, my future will depend very much on—­Hobson’s choice.”

“That’s true,” Miss Guion agreed, hurriedly, as though to emphasize a point.  “It’s all the choice I’ve left to him.  I’ve arranged everything for papa—­beautifully.  He’s to take in a partner perhaps two partners.  You know,” she continued in explanation to Mrs. Fane—­“you know that poor papa has been the whole of Guion, Maxwell & Guion since Mr. Maxwell died.  Well, then, he’s to take in a partner or two, and gradually shift his business into their hands.  That wouldn’t take more than a couple of years at longest.  Then he’s going to retire, and come to live near me in England.  Rupert says there’s a small place close to Heneage that would just suit him.  Papa has always liked the English hunting country, and so—­”

“And so everything will be for the best,” Rodney Temple finished.  “There’s nothing like a fresh young mind, like a young lady’s, for settling business affairs.  It would have taken you or me a long time to work that plan out, wouldn’t it, Henry?  We should be worried over the effect on our trusteeships and the big estates we’ve had the care of—­”

“What about the big estates?”

Davenant noticed the tone in which Guion brought out this question, though it was an hour later before he understood its significance.  It was a sharp tone, the tone of a man who catches an irritating word or two among remarks he has scarcely followed.  Temple apparently had meant to call it forth, since he answered, with the slightest possible air of intention: 

“Oh, nothing—­except what I hear.”

While Miss Guion and Mrs. Fane chatted of their own affairs Davenant remarked the way in which Henry Guion paused, his knife and fork fixed in the chicken wing on his plate, and gazed at his old friend.  He bent slightly forward, too, looking, with his superb head and bust slightly French in style, very handsome and imposing.

“Then you’ve been—­hearing—­things?”

Rodney Temple lowered his eyes in a way that confirmed Davenant—­who knew his former guardian’s tricks of manner—­in his suppositions.  He was so open in countenance that anything momentarily veiled on his part, either in speech or in address, could reasonably be attributed to stress of circumstances.  The broad forehead, straight-forward eyes, and large mouth imperfectly hidden by a shaggy beard and mustache, were of the kind that lend themselves to lucidity and candor.  Externally he was the scholar, as distinct from the professional man or the “divine.”  His figure—­tall, large-boned, and loose-jointed—­had the slight stoop traditionally associated with study, while the profile was thrust forward as though he