Hedges, hadn't you better get Lady Kirton's maid here? I
think she is going mad."
"And now the house is without a master," she bemoaned, returning to her
own griefs and troubles, "and I have all the arrangements thrown upon
myself."
"The house is not without a master," said young Carteret, who seemed
inclined to have the last word. "If one master has gone from it, poor
fellow! there's another to replace him; and he is at your elbow now."
He at her elbow was Val Elster. Lady Kirton gathered in the sense of the
words, and gave a cry; a prolonged cry of absolute dismay.
"_He_ can't be its master."
"I should say he _is_, ma'am. At any rate he is now Lord Hartledon."
She looked from one to the other in helpless doubt. It was a contingency
that had never so much as occurred to her. Had she wanted confirmation,
the next moment brought it to her from the lips of the butler.
"Hedges," called out Percival sternly, in his embarrassment and grief,
"open the dining-room door. We _must_ get the hall cleared."
"The door is open, my lord."
"_He_ Lord Hartledon!" shrieked the countess-dowager, "why, I was going
to recommend his brother to ship him off to Canada for life."
It was altogether an unseemly scene at such a time. But almost everything
the Countess-Dowager of Kirton did was unseemly.
CHAPTER X.
MR. PIKE'S VISIT.
Percival Elster was in truth Earl of Hartledon.
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