‘I never knew but one keeper who was not,’ said Logan.  ’That was in Galloway.  He hated shooting, he hated fishing.  My impression is that he was what we call a “Stickit Minister."’

‘Nothing of that about Fenwick,’ said the Earl.  ’I daresay you would like to see your room?’

Thither Logan was conducted, through a hall hung with pikes, and guns, and bows, and clubs from the South Seas, and Zulu shields and assegais, while a few empty figures in tilting armour, lance in hand, stood on pedestals.  Thence up a broad staircase, along a little gallery, up a few steps of an old ‘turnpike’ staircase, Logan reached his room, which looked down through the trees of the cliff to the Coquet.

Dinner passed in the silver light of the long northern day, that threw strange blue reflections, softer than sapphire, on the ancient plate—­the ambassadorial plate of a Jacobean ancestor.

‘It should all have gone to the melting-pot for King Charles’s service,’ said the Earl, with a sigh, ’but my ancestor of that day stood for the Parliament.’

Logan’s position at dinner was better for observation than for entertainment.  He sat on the right hand of Lady Mary, where the Prince ought to have been seated, but Lady Alice sat on her father’s left, and next her, of course, the Prince.  ’Love rules the camp, the court, the grove,’ and Love deranged the accustomed order, for the Prince sat between Lady Alice and Logan.  Opposite Logan, and at Lady Mary’s left, was the Jesuit, and next him, Scremerston, beside whom was Miss Willoughby, on the Earl’s right.  Inevitably the conversation of the Prince and Lady Alice was mainly directed to each other—­so much so that Logan did not once perceive the princely eyes attracted to Miss Willoughby opposite to him, though it was not easy for another to look at anyone else.  Logan, in the pauses of his rather conventional entertainment by Lady Mary, did look, and he was amazed no less by the beauty than by the spirits and gaiety of the young lady so recently left forlorn by the recreant Jephson.  This flower of the Record Office and of the British Museum was obviously not destined to blush unseen any longer.  She manifestly dazzled Scremerston, who seemed to remember Miss Bangs, her charms, and her dollars no more than Miss Willoughby appeared to remember the treacherous Don.

Scremerston was very unlike his father:  he was a small, rather fair man, with a slight moustache, a close-clipped beard, and little grey eyes with pink lids.  His health was not good:  he had been invalided home from the Imperial Yeomanry, after a slight wound and a dangerous attack of enteric fever, and he had secured a pair for the rest of the Session.  He was not very clever, but he certainly laughed sufficiently at what Miss Willoughby said, who also managed to entertain the Earl with great dexterity and aplomb.  Meanwhile Logan and the Jesuit amused the excellent Lady Mary as best they might,