“You must let me moon about by myself, please, for I’m no sort of company for anybody.”

“You shall do exactly as you like. I’m pretty tired also, and I’m giving a ball next week, and there’s Ascot looming ahead. Happily we’re having quite a small party—and a very quiet one.”

“Is this the lot?” I asked, looking down the table. I knew her habit of letting guests appear in relays during a weekend till the result was a mob.

“Practically. You know all the people?”

“Most of them. Who’s the dark fellow opposite George Lamington?”

Her face brightened into interest. “That’s my new discovery. A country neighbour, no less—but a new breed altogether. His name is Goodeve—Sir Robert Goodeve. He has just succeeded to the place and title.”

Of course I knew Goodeve, that wonderful moated house in the lap of the Downs, but I had never met one of the race. I had had a notion that it had died out. The Goodeves are one of those families about which genealogists write monographs, a specimen of that unennobled gentry which is the oldest stock in England. They had been going on in their undistinguished way since Edward the Confessor.

“Tell me about him,” I said.

“I can’t tell you much. You can see what he looks like. Did you ever know a face so lit up from behind? . . . He was the son of a parson in Northumberland, poor as a church mouse, so he had to educate himself. Local grammar school, some provincial university, and then with scholarships and tutoring he fought his way to Oxford. There he was rather a swell, and made friends with young Marburg, old Isaac’s son, who got him a place in his father’s business. The war broke out, and he served for four years, while Marburgs kept his job open. After that they moved him a good deal about the world, and he was several years in their New York house. It is really a romance, for at thirty-five he had made money, and now at thirty-eight he has inherited Goodeve and a good deal more . . . Yes, he’s a bachelor. Not rich as the big fortunes go, but rich enough. The thing about him is that he has got his jumping-off ground reasonably young, and is now about to leap. Quite modest, but perfectly confident, and terribly ambitious. He is taking up politics, and I back him to make you all sit up.