The letter was written in black, angular, uncompromising characters, that looked rather like sabre-thrusts and bayonets.  It read:—­

“DEAR JACK:—­I have received the enclosure from Linda Lady Blanchemain.  She is an exceedingly impertinent and meddlesome old woman.  But she is right about the allowance.  I don’t know why I never thought of it myself.  I don’t know why you never suggested it.  I extremely regret it.  As next in succession, you are certainly entitled to an annuity from the estate.  I have to-day remitted L500 to your bankers, and am instructing my agents to pay in a like amount quarterly.

“I hope I shall soon be seeing you at Ventmere.  We are having a grand lambing season, but there’s a nasty spread of swine-fever, and the whole country’s papered with handbills.  I got a goodish bit of hunting down at Wilsborough during the winter.  Now there’s nothing to do but play golf.  I never could find any fun in shooting rooks.

     “Your affectionate uncle,

     “B of V.”

And the enclosure:—­

“Linda Lady Blanchemain presents her compliments to Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere, and begs to apprise him that she has lately had the pleasure of meeting his lordship’s nephew John, and has discovered to her amazement that his lordship makes him no allowance.  This situation, for the heir to the barony of Blanchemain, is of course absurd, and must, Lady Blanchemain is sure, be due entirely to an oversight on his lordship’s part.  She ventures, therefore, with all respect, to bring it to his notice.”

So!  Here sat a young man with plenty to think about; a young man, whose income, yesterday a bare six hundred, had sprung up over night to something near six thousand.  Six thousand a year isn’t opulence, if you like, but a young man possessing it can hardly look upon himself as quite empty-handed, either.  This young man, however, had other things as well to think of.  What of that embroidered handkerchief?  What of those shrewd suspicions of Lady Blanchemain’s?  What of his miller’s daughter?

And there was another thing still.  What of his proud old honest Spartan of an unimaginative uncle?  He thought of him, and “Oh, the poor old boy,” he cried.  “Not for ten times the money would I have had the dear old woman write to him like that.  How hard it must have hit him!”

“M, D, and a princely crown,” he reflected.  “I wish I had an Almanach de Gotha.”

VI

“Who was it said of some one that he dearly loved a lord?” Maria Dolores, her chin in the air, asked of Frau Brandt.

“I do not know,” Frau Brandt replied, knitting.

“Well, at least, you know whether it would be possible for a man and wife to live luxuriously on sixpence a week.  Would it?” pursued her tease.

“You are well aware that it would not,” said Frau Brandt.