“Who is Sir George Covert?” I asked.

“One o’ the Calverts, Lord Baltimore’s kin, a sort of cousin of the Ormond-Butlers, a supercilious dandy, a languid macaroni; plagues me, damn his impudence, but I can’t hate him—­no!  Hate him?  Faith, I owe him more than any man on earth ... and love him for it—­which is strange!”

“Has he an estate in jeopardy?” I inquired.

“Yes.  He has a mansion in Albany, too, which he leases.  He bought a mile on the great Vlaic and lives there all alone, shooting, fishing, playing the guitar o’ moony nights, which they say sets the wild-cats wilder.  Mark me, George, a petty mile square and a shooting shanty, and this languid ass says he means to fight for it.  Lord help the man!  I told him I’d buy him out to save him from embroiling us all, and what d’ ye think?  He stared at me through his lorgnons as though I had been some queer, new bird, and, says he, ‘Lud!’ says he,’ there’s a world o’ harmless sport in you yet, Sir Lupus, but you don’t spell your title right,’ says he.  ’Change the a to an o and add an ell for good measure, and there you have it,’ says he, a-drawling.  With which he minced off, dusting his nose with his lace handkerchief, and I’m damned if I see the joke yet in spelling patroon with an o for the a and an ell for good measure!”

He paused, out of breath, to pour himself some spirits.  “Joke?” he muttered.  “Where the devil is it?  I see no wit in that.”  And he picked up a fresh pipe from the rack on the table and moistened the clay with his fat tongue.

We sat in silence for a while.  That this Sir George Covert should call the patroon a poltroon hurt me, for he was kin to us both; yet it seemed that there might be truth in the insolent fling, for selfishness and poltroonery are too often linked.

I raised my eyes and looked almost furtively at my cousin Varick.  He had no neck; the spot where his bullet head joined his body was marked only by a narrow and soiled stock.  His eyes alone relieved the monotony of a stolid countenance; all else was fat.

Sunk in my own reflections, lying back in my arm-chair, I watched dreamily the smoke pouring from the patroon’s pipe, floating away, to hang wavering across the room, now lifting, now curling downward, as though drawn by a hidden current towards the unwaxed oaken floor.

No, there was no Ormond in him; he was all Varick, all Dutch, all patroon.

I had never seen any man like him save once, when a red-faced Albany merchant came a-waddling to the sea-islands looking for cotton and indigo, and we all despised him for the eagerness with which he trimmed his shillings at the Augustine taverns.  Thrift is a word abused, and serves too often as a mask for avarice.

As I sat there fashioning wise saws and proverbs in my busy mind, the hall door opened and the first guest was announced—­Sir George Covert.