Lady Rose’s Daughter

I

“Hullo! No!—Yes!—upon my soul, it is Jacob! Why, Delafield, my dear fellow, how are you?”

So saying—on a February evening a good many years ago—an elderly gentleman in evening dress flung himself out of his cab, which had just stopped before a house in Bruton Street, and hastily went to meet a young man who was at the same moment stepping out of another hansom a little farther down the pavement.

The pleasure in the older man’s voice rang clear, and the younger met him with an equal cordiality, expressed perhaps through a manner more leisurely and restrained.

“So you are home, Sir Wilfrid? You were announced, I saw. But I thought Paris would have detained you a bit.”

“Paris? Not I! Half the people I ever knew there are dead, and the rest are uncivil. Well, and how are you getting on? Making your fortune, eh?”