Black Sheep

'Oh, him!' Stacy said, shrugging. 'He may try to do so, but he won't succeed. Fanny doesn't care a rush for him. But this curst aunt is another matter. Fanny –' He broke off, realising suddenly that he had been betrayed into indiscretion, and summoned his boyish smile to his aid. 'The thing is that Fanny is an heiress. One can't blame her family for wishing her to make a great match, but when one is deep in love considerations of wealth or rank don't signify.'

'Well, at seventeen a girl may fancy herself to be deep in love, but in my experience it isn't a lasting passion,' commented Miles cynically. 'You aren't going to tell me that considerations of wealth don't signify to you, are you?'

The smile died under that ironic gaze; Stacy said angrily: 'Damn it, how could I marry a girl without fortune?'

'I shouldn't think you could. According to what I hear, your windmill has dwindled to a nutshell.'

'Who told you that?' Stacy demanded suspiciously. 'I wasn't aware that you had any acquaintance in England!'

'How should you be? I have, but it was Letty who told me you're monstrously in the wind.'

'Do you mean my great-aunt Kelham?' Stacy said incredulously. 'Are you asking me to believe that you have visited

her?'

'Oh, no! I don't give a straw what you believe. Why should I?' said Miles, with unabated affability.

Flushing, Stacy stammered: 'Beg pardon! It was only that – well, she's such a devil of a high stickler that I shouldn't have thought – that is to say, –'

'I see!' said Miles encouragingly. 'What you would have thought is that she'd have shut the door in my face!'

Stacy burst out laughing. 'Well, yes!' he admitted. 'If I don't owe you respect, I need not wrap it up in clean linen, I collect!'

'Oh, no, not the least need to do that!' Miles assured him. 'The thing is that your great-aunt – lord, to think of Letty's being a great-aunt! She's no more than a dozen years older than I am! – well, the thing is that she was used to have a kindness for me. That might have been because she detested my father, of course. Come to think of it, your father wasn't first oars with her by any means. Or it might have been because most females are partial to rakes,' he added thoughtfully.

'Was that why you were sent abroad?' Stacy asked. 'I've never known precisely – you see, my father never spoke of you, except to say that you were not to be spoken of !'

'Oh, I was shockingly loose in the haft!' responded his uncle cordially. 'I started in the petticoat-line at Eton: that's why they expelled me.'

Stacy regarded him in some awe. 'And – and at Oxford?'

'I don't recall, but I should think very likely. The trouble then was that I was too ripe and ready by half: always raising some kind of a breeze. Nothing to the larks I kicked up in London, though. A peep-of-day boy, that was me – and a damned young fool! I crowned my career by trying to elope with an heiress. That was coming it rather too strong for the family, so they got rid of me, and I'm sure I don't blame them.' He smiled mockingly at his nephew. 'The luck didn't favour you either, did it?'

Stacy stiffened. 'Sir?'

'Tried to leap the book yourself, didn't you?'

'That, sir, is something I prefer not to discuss! It was an un-fortunate episode! We were carried away by what we believed to be an unalterable passion! The circumstances – the whole truth – cannot be known to you, and – in short, I don't feel obliged to justify myself to you!'

'Good God, I trust you won't! It's no concern of mine. I may be your uncle, but I've really very little interest in you. You're too like me, and I find myself a dead bore. The only difference I can discover is that you're a gamester. That's the one vice I never had, and it don't awake a spark of interest in me, because I find gaming a dead bore too.'

'I suppose you're trying to gammon me – or know nothing of gaming, and that I don't believe!'

'Oh, no! I tried gaming, but it held no lure for me. Too slow!'

'Slow?' Stacy gasped.

'Why, yes! What have you to do but stake your blunt, and watch the turn of a card, or the fall of the dice? Same with horse-racing. Now, if I'd ever been offered a match, to ride my own horse against another man's, that would have been sport, if you like! But I ride too heavy, and always did.'

'But they said – I was given to understand – that you cost my grandfather a fortune!'

'I was expensive,' admitted Miles, 'though I shouldn't have put it as high as a fortune. But I got a deal of amusement out of my spendings. What the devil is there to amuse one in hazard or faro?'

It was evident that Stacy found this incomprehensible. He stared, and said, after a moment: 'I should envy you, I suppose! But I don't. It's in my blood, and surely in yours too! Father – my grandfather – great-uncle Charles – oh, all of them!'

'Yes, but you must remember that I was a sad disappointment to the family. My father even suspected me of being a changeling. A delightful theory, but without foundation, I fear.' He threw the butt of his cheroot into the fire, and got up, stretching his long limbs. His light eyes looked down at Stacy, their expression hard to interpret. 'Have you lost Danescourt yet?' he enquired.

Stacy laughed shortly. 'Good God, what would any man in his senses stake against that damned barrack? It's mortgaged to the hilt, and falling into ruin besides! It was encumbered when my father died, and I can't bring it about. I hate the place – wouldn't waste a groat on it!'