“To keep you out of mischief!” replied the Earl, with more promptitude than wisdom.

“Oho!” said the Viscount, quizzing him wickedly. “So that was it, was it? Well, I’ve long suspected that you were not—in your day—such a pattern of rectitude as you would have us believe!”

“Pattern of rectitude! Of course I was no such thing!” said the Earl, repulsing the suggestion with loathing.

“Of course you weren’t!” said the Viscount, laughing at him.

“No! I sowed my wild oats just as any youngster must, but I never consorted with rake-shames!”

This announcement put a quick end to the Viscount’s laughter. He directed a searching look at his father from under suddenly frowning brows, and demanded: “What’s this? If it is to my address, you’ll permit me to tell you that you’ve been misinformed, sir!”

“No, no!” replied his lordship testily. “I’m talking of Simon, muttonhead!”

“Simon! Why, what the devil has he been doing to provoke you?”

“Don’t tell me you aren’t very well aware that he’s for ever on the spree with a set of rascally scrubs, knocking up disgraceful larks, committing every sort of extravagant folly, creating riot and rumpus—”

“Well, I do tell you so, sir!” said the Viscount, interrupting this wholesale indictment without ceremony. “I don’t see much of him, but you may depend upon it that I should hear of it fast enough if he’d got into the sort of company you’re describing! Good God, anyone to hear you would suppose Simon had joined the Beggars’ Club, or ended up each night either in the Finish, or in a Round-house! I daresay you wouldn’t care for the set he runs with—I don’t care for them myself, but that’s because I’m nine-and-twenty, not three-and-twenty, and have outgrown the restiness of my salad days. But they’re not rascally, and they’re certainly not scrubs! Coming it much too strong, Father, believe me!”

“It’s a pity you don’t see much of him!” countered the Earl. “I should have known better than to think you might make it your business to do so!”

“Well, yes, I think you should!” replied the Viscount frankly.

“I take it,” said the Earl, visibly controlling his temper, “that I should be wasting my breath if I asked you to take the young wastrel in hand!”

“You would indeed, Papal Lord, what heed do you think he would pay to me?”

“Oh, well,” replied his lordship grudgingly, “for all your faults you’re good ton, you’re a member of the Four-horse Club, and—thanks to my training!—a pretty accomplished fencer. They tell me that the younger men are inclined to follow your lead, so there’s no saying but what you might have more influence over him than I have.”

“If you had had any brothers, Papa,” said the Viscount, smiling, “you would know that the junior members of the fraternity are very much more likely to run directly counter to what their eldest brother advises than to follow his lead, even if he were a far more notable sportsman than I am! I am sorry to disoblige you, but I must firmly decline to meddle in Simon’s career. I don’t think there’s the least need for anyone to do so, but if you do think so it’s for you to curb his activities, not me!”

“How the devil can I curb them?” demanded his father explosively. “He’s a curst care-for-nobody, and although you may consider me a gudgeon I promise you I’m not such a gudgeon as to stop his allowance! A pretty thing it would be if he got himself rolled-up and I were forced to rescue him from some sponging-house! Not but what it would do him good to be locked up!”

“You know, sir, you are taking much too gloomy a view of young Simon’s prospects! I wish you won’t tease yourself over him—even if he has put you all on end!”

“I might have known you wouldn’t tease yourself!” said the Earl, assailed by another stab of pain. “You’re all alike! Why I’ve been saddled with a pack of selfish, worthless, ungrateful brats I shall never know! Your mother spoilt you to death, of course, and I was fool enough to let her do it! As for you, damme if you’re not the worst of the bunch! I wash my hands of you, and the sooner you take yourself off the better pleased I shall be! I don’t know what brought you down here, but if it was to see me you might have spared yourself the pains! I don’t want to see your face again!”

The Viscount got up, saying with perfect affability: “Well, in that case I’ll remove it from your sight, sir! I won’t ask you for your blessing, for your sense of propriety would compel you to bestow it on me, and I’m sure it would choke you to utter the words! I won’t even offer to shake hands with you—but that’s to save myself a wounding snub!”

“Jackanapes!” said his parent, thrusting out his hand.

The Viscount took it in his, dropped a respectful kiss on it, and said: “Take care of yourself, Papa! Goodbye!”

The Earl watched him cross the room to the door, and, as he opened it, said, in the voice of a man goaded beyond endurance: “I suppose you came home because you wanted something!”

“I did!” replied the Viscount, throwing him a look brimful of mockery over his shoulder. “I wanted to see Mama!”

He then withdrew in good order, firmly closing the door on the explosion of wrath which greeted this parting shot.

When he reached the hall of the house he found that the butler was there, and encountered such a glance of mournful sympathy from this aged and privileged retainer that he broke into a chuckle, saying: “You’re looking your last at me, Pedmore! My father has cast me out! He says I’m a worthless skitterbrain, and a jackanapes, besides a number of other things which I can’t at the moment remember. Would you have believed he could be so unfeeling?”

The butler clicked his tongue disapprovingly, and shook his head. Sighing deeply, he replied: “It’s the gout, my lord. It always makes him mifty!”

“Mifty!” said the Viscount. “What you mean is that it sets him at dagger-drawing with anyone unwise enough to cross his path, you old humbugger!”

“It would not become me to agree with your lordship, so I shall hold my peace,” said Pedmore severely. “And, if I may venture to proffer a word of advice—being as I have known your honoured parent for many years longer than you have, my lord—I would respectfully beg you not to set any store by anything he may say when he’s in the gout, for he doesn’t mean it—not if it’s you! And if you was to take snuff he’d be regularly blue-devilled—he would indeed, my lord, whatever he may have said to you!”

“Bless you, Pedmore, do you think I don’t know it?” said the Viscount, smiling affectionately at him. “You must think I’m a lunkhead! Where shall I find my mother?”

“In her drawing-room, my lord.”

The Viscount nodded, and ran lightly up the broad stairway. His mother greeted his entrance to her sanctum with a warm smile, and a hand held out to him. “Come in, dearest!” she said. “Have you been having a dreadful peal rung over you?”

He kissed her hand. “Lord, yes!” he said cheerfully. “He rattled me off in famous style! In fact, he has informed me that he doesn’t wish to see my face again.”

“Oh, dear! But he doesn’t mean it, you know. Yes, of course you do: you always understand things without having to have them explained to you, don’t you?”

“Do I? It seems very unlikely! And I don’t think it can be true, for both you and old Pedmore seem to believe that I must need reassurance! I don’t, but I claim no extraordinary powers of understanding for that! No one who was not a confirmed sapskull could suppose—being intimately acquainted with Papa!—that his violent attacks spring from anything but colic and gout! I feared the worst when I saw him partake so lavishly of the curried crab at dinner last night; and my fears were confirmed when he embarked on the second bottle of port. Pray don’t think me captious, Mama, but ought he to regale himself quite so unwisely?”

“No,” replied Lady Wroxton. “It is very bad for him, but it is quite useless to remonstrate with him, for it only puts him out of temper to be offered the wholesome dishes Dr Chettle prescribes, when he has expressed a desire for something most indigestible, and you know what he is, Ashley, when he is thwarted! And when he flies into one of his odd rages!”

“I know!” said the Viscount, smiling.

“It is even worse for him when he does that, because he becomes exhausted, and then falls into a fit of dejection, and says that he is burnt to the socket, and has nothing to do but to wind up his accounts. And it is quite as bad for the household, for even Pedmore, who is so very devoted to us, doesn’t like to have things thrown at him—particularly when it chances to be mutton-broth.”

“As bad as that?” said the Viscount, considerably startled.

“Oh, not always!” his mother assured him, in a comfortable voice. “And he is in general very sorry afterwards, and tries to make amends for having behaved with so little moderation. I daresay he will be a trifle twitty tonight, but I have the greatest hope that tomorrow he will be content to eat a panada, or a boiled chicken. So you have no need to look so concerned, dearest: very likely it will be several weeks before he indulges himself again with his favourite dishes.”

“I am concerned for you, Mama, far more than I am for him! I don’t know how you are able to bear your life! I could not!”

“No, I don’t suppose you could,” she responded, looking at him in tolerant amusement. “You weren’t acquainted with him when he was young, and naturally you were never in love with him. But I was, and I remember how gay, and handsome, and dashing he used to be, and how very happy we were. And we still love one another, Ashley.”