"You do not think, mother," he said gaily, "that I am going to buy a tame eagle, and hire a fishing boat and take France?"
She smiled sadly, remembering her husband's dread of lofty aspirants. "No," she said, "I think, if your father were alive now, he would see as little need of cautioning you against becoming a pretender to the throne of France as of keeping out of dissipation. But he told me if ever you showed signs of plunging into politics I was to give you the paper. I left it in my room, thinking we might both sit there, not fancying we should have our chat here. I shall give it to you as you go to your room."
"And you have no clue to what the paper contains?" he asked pleasantly.
"No," she answered with hesitancy and a thoughtful lowering of her eyes. "You remember, at that time--I mean as a boy and lad--you were a fierce Radical."
"Oh, more than that! I was a Republican, a Socialist, a Nihilist, I think. A regular out-and-out Fire-eater, Iconoclast, Destructionist, I think," the young man laughed, throwing himself back in his chair and enjoying the memory of his youthful thoroughness.
"And your father took no part whatever in politics, seemed to dread the mention of them. He was at heart, I think, an aristocrat."
"And married the daughter of Sir Ralph Preston, whose family goes back centuries before the Plantagenets, and to whom a baronetcy is like a mere Brummagem medal on the breast of a Pharoah."
Mrs. Hanbury shook her head deprecatingly and smiled. "I am afraid you are as ardent in your estimate of my family pretensions to lineage as you were long ago in your hatred of kings and princes."
"But I have always been true to you, mother!" he said in that wonderful, irresistible, meltingly affectionate voice; he took her hand and kissed it reverentially.
"Yes, my son. Always." As his head was bent over her hand she laid her hand on his thick dark curly hair.
"My mother," he murmured, when he felt her touch.
Her eyes filled and shone with tears. She made an effort, commanded herself, and as her son sat back on his chair, went on: "You know when your father went into business there was no necessity of a money kind for his doing so. The Hanburys have had plenty of money always, never lands, as far as I know, but money always. They were not a very old family as far as I have heard. This was a point on which your father was reticent. At all events he went into business in the City, as you are aware, and there made a second fortune."