“I don’t know — and, speaking as one who held the tide until very recently, I promise you Giles won’t care!”

“I’d have liked him to have been a lord,” said Mr Chawleigh wistfully.

“Well, I’ve no wish to seem disobliging,” said Adam, tired of the discussion, “but I don’t consider it to be any part of my paternal duty to put a period of my life merely to provide Giles with a title!”

He spoke a little impatiently, and was immediately ashamed, because Mr Chawleigh said he hoped no offense was taken, as none was intended. To make amends, he devoted himself to Mr Chawleigh’s entertainment all one afternoon, with the result that he became so inwardly chafed that he found himself looking forward with positive yearning to the date of his well-meaning but disastrously irritating guest’s departure. This was not long delayed. Mr Chawleigh remained at Fontley only until he was convinced that there was no danger that Jenny would succumb to puerperal fever, which was another of his bugbears. Satisfied on this point, he was as anxious to be gone as Adam was to see him go: the lord alone knew, he said, what silly mistakes his various subordinates had made during his absence from the City. His worst stroke was left to the last moment, when his chaise was at the door, and he was taking leave of Adam in the porch. His mood was benign: his daughter was safe; he had a lusty grandson; his son-in-law had made him as welcome as if he had been a Duke, even naming the baby after him, and behaving, when he’d come the ugly for no reason at all, as patiently and kindly as if he had been his real son. Mr Chawleigh’s heart was full of gratitude and generosity, and, unfortunately, it overflowed. Shaking Adam warmly by the hand, and looking at him with rough affection, he thanked him for the third time for his hospitality. “If anyone had told me I’d be happy to stay in the country for more than a sennight I’d have laughed in their faces!” he said. “But you make me so welcome, my lord, that if you don’t take care you’ll have me posting down to visit you more often than you bargain for. I’ve got to feel myself so much at home here that the next thing you know I’ll be talking about oats and rye and the like as glib as you do! Which brings me to something I’ve got to say to you!”

“About oats and rye?” said Adam, smiling. “No, no, sir! You stick to your trade and I’ll stick to mine!”

Mr Chawleigh chuckled at this. “Ay, that’s my motto! No, that ain’t it: the thing is, Jenny’s been telling me about some farm or other you’re mad after, for experiments, she said. Well, I’m sure I don’t know what you want with such things, — and I don’t deny it seems corkbrained to me! But there! If you’re set on it, I suppose you’ll have to have it, so you tell me how much of the ready you need to set it going, and I’ll stand the nonsense!”

“How very kind of you, sir!” Adam said, forcing himself to speak pleasantly. “But I assure you I’m not mad after any farm! I have quite enough to do without saddling myself with an experimental farm.”

Mr-Chawleigh was disappointed, but also relieved. He wished to bestow a handsome present on Adam, but it did seem wicked to squander one’s blunt on anything so silly as an experimental farm. So he did not press the matter, but set off for London, cudgelling his brain in an attempt to hit on something which his incomprehensible son-in-law really would like to receive.

Adam was left a prey to bitter hatred of insensitive vulgarians, who could never be made to understand how much their oppressive generosity lacerated the feelings of those cast in finer moulds than themselves.

Yet five minutes later he found himself defending Mr Chawleigh from the Dowager’s acid criticisms, even telling her that he held him in affection and esteem, which, at that moment, was far from being the truth.

The Dowager was suffering slightly from reaction. She had risen nobly to an occasion, but the occasion had passed. While it was of paramount importance that her daughter-in-law should be kept in a tranquil state of mind she had found it easy to suppress every critical impulse; but Jenny, though slow to recover her strength, was now out of danger, and the Dowager felt at liberty to unburden herself of a great many criticisms and grievances. Adam, having endured an extremely wearing week keeping his mother and his father-in-law apart, and, when this was impossible, stepping hastily into every breach created by two such ill-assorted persons, was in no mood to listen to these, and he gave his mother a very improper set-down. A serious rupture threatened, but was averted by the Dowager’s recollecting that her younger daughter was shortly to make her début, and that in her own miserably straitened circumstances it was quite impossible for her to provide all the expensive raiment necessary for this event.

It had been decided that since Jenny, confined at the end of March, would be very imprudent to embark on the exigencies of a London season, Lady Nassington should launch Lydia into the ton. The Dowager had, in fact, brought Lydia to London, and had consigned her to her aunt’s care. She had, at great personal sacrifice, supplied her with a number of elegant ball-dresses, walking-dresses, and demi-toilettes, but it was quite out of her power to provide her with a Court-dress. The child could certainly not afford to pay for this herself, out of the slender allowance her brother made her, and dear Adam would scarcely wish the charge to fall upon his aunt.

He did not wish it; and even less did he wish the cost of Lydia’s presentation to be borne by Jenny. He gave the Dowager a draft on Drummond’s, which put her so much in charity with him that instead of shaking the dust of Fontley from her feet she remained there for another week. She was thus present when Lady Oversley drove over from Beckenhurst on a visit of congratulation, bringing with her Lady Rockhill, and the Ladies Sarah and Elizabeth Edgcott, two very well brought-up and rather mouse-like little girls, who (just as Jenny had prophesied) sat and gazed with shy admiration at their lovely young stepmother.

Lady Oversley had neither meant nor wished to bring Julia to Fontley, but she had found it impossible to leave her behind. The Rockhills were paying a brief visit to Beckenhurst on their way up to London, where Julia was going to buy much prettier dresses for her stepdaughters than their austere grandmama had considered suitable, show them all the sights, and in general entertain them royally before sending them back to their governess and their books at Rockhill Castle. “But before we leave you, Mama,” Julia said, “I must go to Fontley to see how Jenny does, of course.”

Lady Oversley ventured to suggest that a letter of felicitation would perhaps be better than a visit.

“When it’s known that I’m here, so close to Fontley?” Julia said. “Oh, no! How unkind it would be in me not to visit Jenny! I won’t have it said that I didn’t render her every observance!”

When the visit was paid Jenny was still confined to her room, but the Dowager was able to assure Lady Oversley that she was quite well enough to receive her, and dear Julia too. She conducted them upstairs, leaving the little girls seated primly side by side on a sofa in the Green Saloon, with a book of engravings to look at.

Jenny, who was permitted now to spend some hours on a day-bed, greeted her visitors with pleasure, but it was not long before Lady Oversley judged it to be time to withdraw. Julia, she thought, was talking too much and too animatedly to Jenny, who was obviously languid and invalidish. One might almost have said that Julia was rattlingon in a way that would probably leave Jenny with a headache. She had kissed her, and felicitated her, and admired the baby, which was perfectly proper, but it would have been better to have kept all her gay reminiscences of Paris for a future date. It could not interest Jenny to know what this person had said to Madame la Marquise, or what that person had said about her. Lady Oversley felt uneasily that had it been anyone but Julia she would have suspected her of flaunting her triumphs and her wedded felicity in front of poor little Jenny. So she got up to take her leave. Julia followed her example, saying: “But I must have one last peep at your baby, Jenny! Dear little man! He’s like you, I think.” She looked up from the cradle, laughing: “I’m a Mama too, you know! I’ve two daughters — such darlings! They ought to hate me, but they spoil me to death!”

When the ladies entered the Green Saloon again they found Adam there, trying to draw out the Ladies Sarah and Elizabeth. Julia gave him her hand, exclaiming: “Oh, you have made the acquaintance of my daughters already! That’s too bad! I’m quite as proud a mama as Jenny, I promise you, and had meant to have presented them to you in form.”

He had dreaded this meeting, but when he looked at Julia, and listened to her, she seemed to be almost a stranger. Even her appearance had altered. She had always been charmingly dressed, but in a style suited to her maiden status; he had never seen her attired in the silks, the velvets, and the jewels of matronhood. He thought she looked very rich and fashionable, with all the curled plumes clustering round the high crown of her hat, the sapphire-drops in her ears, the sable stole flung carelessly over the back of her chair, but she did not look like his Julia. It did not occur to him that she was somewhat overdressed for the occasion, but it had occurred forcibly to Lady Oversley, who had remonstrated, only to be told that she had nothing else to wear, and that Rockhill liked her to look elegant.

She was telling his mother how nervous she had been when Rockhill had taken her to meet his children, making a droll story of it. The little girls giggled, and uttered protestingly: “Oh, Mama!” She had been afraid that Rockhill’s servants would regard her as a usurper, and that his sisters would disapprove of her. Such an ordeal as it had been! But they were all such dear creatures that they positively killed her with kindness: she was becoming odiously spoilt, and would soon, if they persisted in cosseting her, be the most idle, exacting, and selfish toad imaginable.