A gleam of humour lit the Duke’s eyes; he said meekly: “I think I must have a secretive disposition, sir.”

“Nothing of the sort!” said his lordship. “It is high time you realized that you are of age, and may do as you please. Now, be off, and don’t neglect to change your stockings! I hope you have been wearing flannel ones, and not—”

“Lamb’s-wool,” said the Duke, more meekly still.

“Very well, and now make haste, if you please! Unless you wish to keep town-hours at Sale?”

The Duke disclaimed any such desire, and vanished into his bedchamber, where Nettlebed had already laid out his evening dress. The room, although of vast size, was very warm, for a fire had been lit in the grate much earlier in the day, and the windows closed against any treacherous fresh air. Curtains of crimson damask shut out the fading daylight, and the great fourpost-bed was hung with the same stuff. Branches of candles stood on the dressing-table and the mantelpiece; and a silver ewer of hot water had been placed in the wash-basin, and covered with a clean towel. The room was furnished throughout in crimson damask, and mahogany, and hung with a Chinese paper of the style made fashionable some years previously by the Prince Regent, who used it extensively in his summer palace at Brighton. Everything in it seemed to be made on rather too large and opulent a scale for its occupant, but it was not an uncomfortable apartment, and, during the day, was generally flooded with sunshine, since it faced south, commanding a view of the avenue, the formal beds and lawns beyond it, the sheet of ornamental water which the Guide Book so highly commended, and, in the distance, the noble trees of the home park. The Duke had slept in it ever since the day when his uncle had decreed that he was too old for petticoat government, and had removed him from his more homely nurseries, and installed him, a small and quaking ten-year-old, in it, telling him that it was his father’s room, and his grandfather’s before him, and that only the head of the house might inhabit it.