“Doing it rather too brown, Martin!” Mr. Warboys said bluntly. “Always said that nasty temper of yours would land you in a fix one of these days!” He added, with considerable courage: “Lesson to you! Have to live it down, old boy!”

Instead of issuing the challenge which Mr. Warboys would have had no hesitation in declining, Martin had turned on his heel, and walked off without another word spoken.

The Dowager, resuming her place in the household at Stanyon, soon realized that Martin’s return had not, as she had felt sure it must, allayed all suspicion against him. Nothing in her well-ordered existence had prepared her for such a situation as now confronted her. Her egotism happily preserved her from self-blame, but her agitation was, nevertheless, acute, and prompted her to pay her stepson a visit. Miss Morville was powerless to resist this incursion; she could only hope that the Earl’s constitution was strong enough to support him through the ordeal. She discovered, as others had done before her, that his apparent fragility and his gentleness were alike deceptive. He received his stepmother with equanimity, and although her visit wearied him it did not, as Miss Morville had feared it must, agitate his pulse. The Dowager harangued him for half an hour, ringing all the changes between scolding, dictating, and pleading. He heard her with patience, and answered her with such kindness that she left his room much tranquillized, and only realized some hours later that her intervention had achieved nothing. He did not banish Martin from Stanyon, but he would not again admit him to his bedchamber; he told her that he should adhere to his story of the man in homespuns, but he gave her no assurance that he believed Martin to be innocent of the attempt upon his life. It was not until Martin questioned her upon these points that the Earl’s omissions occurred to her. She had seldom suffered so severe a setback, and its effect upon her was such that Miss Morville felt herself obliged to accede to her almost tearful request to her young friend not to leave her while her nerves were so much overset.

Thus it was that Mr. and Mrs. Morville, arriving in the middle of the following week at Gilbourne House, found that although their daughter was certainly there to welcome them she had no immediate intention of rejoining the family circle. Mr. Morville, much astonished, was at once shocked and grieved. He feared that Drusilla had been led away by grandeur; and, had he received the least encouragement from his helpmate, he would have felt strongly inclined to have exerted his parental authority to compel his daughter to return to her own home. So far from receiving such encouragement, he was dissuaded, in unmistakable terms, from expressing even the mildest desire for Drusilla’s return.

“It appears,” said Mrs. Morville fluently, “that they are in trouble at Stanyon. If Lady St. Erth wishes Drusilla to remain with her for the present, I should not like to be disobliging, you know.”

Mr. Morville conceded this point, but observed that he knew not why his daughter should be required to act as a sick-bed attendant in a household where as many as twenty — or, for anything he knew, thirty — servants were employed.

“As to that,” said Mrs. Morville, “it is Lady St. Erth rather than her stepson who depends just now upon Drusilla. These very shocking rumours have distressed her excessively. I am sure it is no wonder! And Drusilla, you know, feels that it would be a shabby thing to desert her, after her kindness. I own, I cannot but agree that we are very much obliged to her ladyship for entertaining our daughter during these weeks of our absence; and I should not, for my part, wish Drusilla to be backward in any attention.”

Mr. Morville, while he assimilated these words, removed his spectacles, and thoroughly polished them with his handkerchief. He then replaced them, and through them regarded the wife of his bosom with some severity. “When we set forth upon our travels, my love,” he said, “it was only at Lady St. Erth’s earnest entreaty that we left our daughter in her charge. The obligation was upon her side; and had it been otherwise I should never have consented to the arrangement. I had thought that we were at one on this!”

“Certainly! There can be no question!” Mrs. Morville said, showing a heightened colour. “The thing is — Mr. Morville, I have been closeted with Drusilla this past hour! I will not conceal from you that what she said to me — and, even more, what she did not say to me! — has given me food for serious reflection!”

“Indeed!”

“Reserve,” announced Mrs. Morville nobly, “is at all times repugnant to me! My dear sir, I beg you will tell me anything you may know of this young man!”

“What young man?” asked her lord, in bewildered accents.

Mrs. Morville had the greatest respect for her husband’s scholarly attainments, and for his grasp on imponderable subjects, but she had frequently been obliged to own that on more practical matters he was exasperatingly obtuse. She clicked her tongue impatiently, and responded: “Why, the new Earl, to be sure!”

“St. Erth?” he said. “I have never met him. I believe my brother is acquainted with him, but I do not immediately perceive in what way this can be germane to the present issue.”

“I daresay you might not,” said Mrs. Morville tolerantly, “for you never perceive what is under your nose, my love! What would you say to it if our daughter were to become the Countess of St. Erth?”

“What?”exclaimed the gentleman, in anything but a gratified tone. “You cannot be in earnest!”

She nodded. “I assure you, I was never more so! I saw at a glance, of course, that Drusilla was changed, but until I had enjoyed an hour alone with her I had no more idea of the cause than you. Though, to be sure, I might have guessed, from the scant references in her letters to his lordship, how the wind blew! He seems to be a most amiable young man, my dear sir! And this accident, shocking though it may be, throwing them together in such a way — !”

“Have I heard aright?” interrupted Mr. Morville. “Do I understand that you — you,Mrs. Morville! — would welcome such an alliance?”

“Pray, have you heard anything about the young man which would preclude my welcoming it?” she demanded.

“I know nothing of him. I daresay he is as idle and as expensive as any other of his order.”

“I am astonished that a man of your mental attainment, my dear Mr. Morville, should speak with such prejudice!” said his wife. “From all I have heard from Drusilla, he is quite unexceptionable, and blessed with so sweet a temper that I am sure he must make any female a most delightful husband!”

“He may be possessed of all the virtues!” retorted Mr. Morville, “but he must be held to stand for everything which you and I, ma’am, have dedicated our lives to combating! His very rank, I should have supposed, would have rendered him odious to you! Is it possible that I have been deceived? Were we not at one in cherishing the hope that our daughter and Henry Poundsbridge would make a match of it?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Morville reasonably, “I have a great regard for Henry Poundsbridge, and I own I should not have opposed the connection; for Drusilla, you know, is not a Beauty, and when a girl has been out for three seasons it is not the time to be picking and choosing amongst her suitors. An excellent young man, but not, you will admit, to be compared with Lord St. Erth!”

“I cannot credit the evidence of my own ears!” said Mr. Morville. “How is it possible that you should talk in such a strain as this, Mrs. Morville? Is this, I ask myself, the woman who wrote The Distaff? Is this the authoress of Reflections on the Republican State? Is this the companion with whom I have shared my every philosophic thought? I am appalled!”

“So you might well be, my dear sir, if I were such a zany as to prefer Henry Poundsbridge to the Earl of St. Erth for my daughter!” responded the lady with some asperity. “It is an alliance it would not have entered my head to seek, but if the Earl — I say, if! — were to offer for dear Drusilla, and you were to refuse your permission, I should be strongly inclined to clap you into Bedlam! I marvel, my love, that a man of your intellect should so foolishly confuse theory with practice! I shall continue to hold by those opinions which I share with you, but when it comes to my only daughter’s creditable establishment in the world it is time to set aside Utopian dreams!” She perceived that her husband was looking slightly stunned by this burst of eloquence, and at once drove him against the ropes by adding in quelling accents: “As Cordelia Consett, I must deplore the present state of society; but as a Mother I must deem myself unworthy of that title were I to spurn a connection so flattering to my Child!”

“Am I to understand,” asked Mr. Morville, “that the Earl is about to make an offer for Drusilla?”

“Good gracious, my dear, how you do run on!” exclaimed his wife. “For anything I know, St. Erth has no such notion in his head! You may be sure that I was careful not to seem to be in the least conscious when I was talking to Drusilla. That would never do! Merely, I suspect that her heart may not be untouched.”

“If,” said Mr. Morville, asserting himself, “you have reason to suppose that St. Erth has been trifling with Drusilla — ”

“Nothing of the sort! From what I have learnt today, I am persuaded that he is by far too great a gentleman to raise expectations he has no intention of fulfilling. Besides, men never do trifle with Drusilla,” added Mrs. Morville, in a voice not wholly free from regret.

“It appears to me,” said her spouse, pointedly opening his book, “that you are making a piece of work about nothing, my dear!”