said Lord Henry languidly.

"Mr. Dorian Gray? Who is he?" asked Lord Fermor, knitting his bushy
white eyebrows.

"That is what I have come to learn, Uncle George. Or rather,
I know who he is. He is the last Lord Kelso's grandson.
His mother was a Devereux, Lady Margaret Devereaux.
I want you to tell me about his mother. What was she like?
Whom did she marry? You have known nearly everybody
in your time, so you might have known her. I am very much
interested in Mr. Gray at present. I have only just
met him."

"Kelso's grandson!" echoed the old gentleman. "Kelso's grandson! ... Of
course.... I knew his mother intimately. I believe I was at her christening.
She was an extraordinarily beautiful girl, Margaret Devereux, and made
all the men frantic by running away with a penniless young fellow--
a mere nobody, sir, a subaltern in a foot regiment, or something
of that kind. Certainly. I remember the whole thing as if it
happened yesterday. The poor chap was killed in a duel at Spa a few
months after the marriage. There was an ugly story about it.
They said Kelso got some rascally adventurer, some Belgian brute,
to insult his son-in-law in public--paid him, sir, to do it, paid him--
and that the fellow spitted his man as if he had been a pigeon.
The thing was hushed up, but, egad, Kelso ate his chop alone at the club
for some time afterwards. He brought his daughter back with him, I was told,
and she never spoke to him again. Oh, yes; it was a bad business.
The girl died, too, died within a year. So she left a son, did she?
I had forgotten that. What sort of boy is he? If he is like his mother,