Ralph thanked him and left.

He sped northward to the Malibran, where he learned that Mr. and Mrs. Spragg were at dinner.  He sent his name down to the subterranean restaurant, and Mr. Spragg presently appeared between the limp portieres of the “Adam” writing-room.  He had grown older and heavier, as if illness instead of health had put more flesh on his bones, and there were greyish tints in the hollows of his face.

“What’s this about Paul?” Ralph exclaimed.  “My mother’s had a message we can’t make out.”

Mr. Spragg sat down, with the effect of immersing his spinal column in the depths of the arm-chair he selected.  He crossed his legs, and swung one foot to and fro in its high wrinkled boot with elastic sides.

“Didn’t you get a letter?” he asked.

“From my—­from Undine’s lawyers?  Yes.”  Ralph held it out.  “It’s queer reading.  She hasn’t hitherto been very keen to have Paul with her.”

Mr. Spragg, adjusting his glasses, read the letter slowly, restored it to the envelope and gave it back.  “My daughter has intimated that she wishes these gentlemen to act for her.  I haven’t received any additional instructions from her,” he said, with none of the curtness of tone that his stiff legal vocabulary implied.

“But the first communication I received was from you—­at least from Mrs. Spragg.”

Mr. Spragg drew his beard through his hand.  “The ladies are apt to be a trifle hasty.  I believe Mrs. Spragg had a letter yesterday instructing her to select a reliable escort for Paul; and I suppose she thought—­”

“Oh, this is all too preposterous!” Ralph burst out, springing from his seat.  “You don’t for a moment imagine, do you—­any of you—­that I’m going to deliver up my son like a bale of goods in answer to any instructions in God’s world?—­Oh, yes, I know—­I let him go—­I abandoned my right to him...but I didn’t know what I was doing...I was sick with grief and misery.  My people were awfully broken up over the whole business, and I wanted to spare them.  I wanted, above all, to spare my boy when he grew up.  If I’d contested the case you know what the result would have been.  I let it go by default—­I made no conditions all I wanted was to keep Paul, and never to let him hear a word against his mother!”

Mr. Spragg received this passionate appeal in a silence that implied not so much disdain or indifference, as the total inability to deal verbally with emotional crises.  At length, he said, a slight unsteadiness in his usually calm tones:  “I presume at the time it was optional with you to demand Paul’s custody.”

“Oh, yes—­it was optional,” Ralph sneered.

Mr. Spragg looked at him compassionately.  “I’m sorry you didn’t do it,” he said.

XXXIII