“Poor boy! It was a sad blow to him, wasn’t it? It quite wrung my heart to see him so restless, and out of spirits, but thank heaven that is all over now, for I couldn’t have borne it if your grandfather had agreed to let him join! I daresay it was just a boyish fancy—but Richmond has such good sense!”

Anthea looked up, as though she would have spoken; but she apparently thought better of the impulse, and closed her lips again.

“Depend upon it,” said Mrs. Darracott comfortably, “he will never think of it again, once he has gone to Oxford. Oh dear, how we shall miss him! I don’t know what I shall do!”

The crease which had appeared between Anthea’s brows deepened. She said, after a moment’s hesitation: “Richmond has no turn for scholarship, Mama. He has failed once, and for my part I think he will fail again, because he doesn’t wish to succeed. And here we are in September, so that he will be more than nineteen by the time he does go to Oxford—if he goes—and he will have spent another year here, with nothing to do but to—”

“Nothing of the sort!” interrupted Mrs. Darracott, bristling in defence of her idol. “He will be studying!”

“Oh!” said Anthea, in a colourless voice. She glanced uncertainly at her mother, again hesitated, and then said: “Shall I ring for some working-candles, Mama?”

Mrs. Darracott, who was engaged in darning, with exquisite stitches, the torn needlepoint lace flounce to a petticoat, agreed to this; and in a very short space of time both ladies were deedily employed: the elder with her needle, the younger with some cardboard, out of which she was making a reticule, in the shape of an Etruscan vase. This was in accordance with the latest mode; and, if The Mirror of Fashion were to be believed, any ingenious lady could achieve the desired result without the smallest difficulty. “Which confirms me in the melancholy suspicion that I am quite lacking in ingenuity, besides having ten thumbs,” remarked Anthea, laying it aside as Chollacombe brought the tea-tray into the room.

“I think it will look very elegant when you have painted it, my love,” said Mrs. Darracott consolingly. She looked up, and saw that Richmond had followed the butler into the room, and her face instantly became wreathed in smiles. “Oh, Richmond! You have come to take tea with us! How charming this is!” A thought occurred to her; her expression underwent a ludicrous change; she said apprehensively: “Does your grandfather mean to join us, dearest?”

He shook his head, but there was a gleam of mischief in his eyes, which did not escape his sister. His mother, less observant, said in a relieved tone: “To be sure, he rarely does so, does he? Thank you, Chollacombe: nothing more! Now, sit down, Richmond, and tell us!”

“What, about the weaver’s son? Oh, I can’t! Grandpapa snapped my nose off, so we played backgammon, and I won, and then he said I might take myself off, because he wants to talk to you, Mama!”

“You are a detestable boy!” remarked Anthea. “Mama take care! you will spill that! Depend upon it, he only means to throw a great many orders at your head about the manner in which we are to entertain the heir.”

“Yes,” agreed Mrs. Darracott, recovering her complexion. “Of course! I wonder if I should go to him immediately, or whether—”

“No, you will first drink your tea, Mama,” said Anthea firmly. “Did he tell you nothing about our unknown cousin, Richmond?”

“Well, only that he’s a military man, and was in France, with the Army of Occupation, when my uncle Granville was drowned, and that he has written that he will visit us the day after tomorrow.”

“That must have been the letter James brought from the receiving office, then!” exclaimed Mrs. Darracott. “Well, at least he can write! Poor young man! I can’t but pity him, though I perfectly appreciate how provoking it is for us all that he should have been born. Still, even your grandfather can’t blame him for that!”

“For shame, Mama! You are under-rating my grandfather in the most disrespectful way! Of course he can!”

Mrs. Darracott could not help laughing at this, but she shook her head at her too-lively daughter as well, saying that she ought not to speak so saucily of her grandfather. After that she finished drinking her tea, begged Richmond not to go bed before she returned from the ordeal before her, and went away to the library.

Anthea got up to fill her cup again. She glanced down at Richmond, sunk into a deep chair and smothering a yawn. “You look to be three parts asleep. Are you?”

“No—yes—I don’t know! I had one of my bad nights, that’s all. Don’t cosset me—and, for God’s sake, don’t say anything to Mama!”

“What a fortunate thing that you’ve warned me!” said Anthea, sitting down in her mother’s vacated chair. “I was just about to run after Mama, before procuring a composer for you.”

He grinned at her. “Pitching it too rum!” he murmured. “I wonder what Grandpapa does want to say to Mama?”

“I don’t know, but I hope he may say it with civility! How could you stand there, and let him speak to her as he did at dinner, Richmond?”

“Well, I can’t stop him! What’s more, I’ve more sense than to rip up at him as you did! It only puts Mama in a quake, when she thinks he may fly into a passion with you or me: you should know that!”

“He doesn’t like one the less for squaring up to him,” she said. “I will allow him that virtue: I don’t know that he has any other.”

“He may not like you less, but you’re a female: the cases are different.”

“I don’t think so. He liked Papa far more than he liked Uncle Granville or Uncle Matthew, but I can’t tell you how often they were at outs. I daresay you might not remember, but—”

“Oh, don’t I just!” he interrupted. “Grandpapa abusing Papa like a pickpocket, Papa as mad as Bedlam, the pair of them brangling and brawling to be heard all over the house—! Not remember? I don’t remember anything half as well! Too well to court the same Turkish treatment that Papa got: you may be sure of that!”

She looked curiously at him. “But you’re not afraid of him, are you?”

“No, I’m not afraid of him, but I detest the sort of riot and rumpus he kicks up when he’s in a rage. Besides, it doesn’t answer: you’ll get nothing out of Grandpapa if you come to cuffs with him. I’ll swear he gives me more than ever he gave Papa!”

She reflected that this was true. Lord Darracott, who grudged every groat he was obliged to spend on anything but his own pleasure, pandered to his favourite grandson’s every extravagant whim. If coaxing did not move him, it was seldom that Richmond failed to bring him round his thumb by falling into a fit of despondency. That was how Richmond had come by the beautiful headstrong colt he had himself broken and trained. He had coaxed in vain. “Do you think I’ll help you to break your neck, boy?” had demanded his lordship. Richmond had not persisted, and even so clear-sighted a critic as his elder sister had been unable to accuse him of sulkiness. He was as docile as ever, as attentive to his grandfather, and quite uncomplaining. But he made it very evident that his spirits were wholly cast down; and within a week his dejection, besides throwing Mrs. Darracott into high fidgets, had won the colt for him. Anything, said Lord Darracott, was better than to have the boy so languid and listless.

It had been to cajole him out of silent despair at being told that under no circumstances would my lord buy him a pair of colours that his yacht had been bestowed on him. Suddenly Anthea wondered if the possession of a sailing vessel had been what he had all the time desired. She turned her eyes towards him, and said abruptly: “Do you still wish for a military career, Richmond?”

He had picked up one of the weekly journals from the table at his elbow, and was glancing through it, but he looked up quickly at that, his expressive eyes kindling. “I don’t care for anything else!”

‘Then—”

“You needn’t go on! Why don’t I persist? Why don’t I do this—or that—or the other? Because I know when my grandfather can’t be persuaded by anything I could do or say! That’s why! I’m under age—and if you are thinking that I might run off and take the King’s shilling, it’s the sort of hubble-bubble notion a female would get into her head! That’s not how I wish to join! I—oh, stop talking about it! I won’t talk about it! It’s over and done with! I daresay I shouldn’t have liked it, after all!”

He turned back to his journal, hunching an impatient shoulder, and Anthea said no more, knowing that it would be useless. She was deeply troubled, however, and not for the first time. He was spoilt, and wilful, but she loved him, and was wise enough to realize that his faults sprang from his upbringing and were to be laid at Lord Darracott’s door.

He had been a sickly, undersized baby, succumbing to every childish ailment: not at all the sort of grandson that might have been expected to occupy Lord Darracott’s heart. His lordship, indeed, had paid scant heed to him until it was forcibly borne in upon him that the frail scrap whom he despised was possessed of a demon of intrepidity. But from the day when a terrified groom had carried into the house a baby who screamed: “Put me down, put me down! I can ride him! I can!” and had learned from this trembling individual that his tiny grandson had (by means unknown and unsuspected) got upon the back of one of his own hunters and put this great, rawboned creature at the gate that led out of the stableyard, he had adored Richmond. There had been no bones broken, but the child had been stunned by the inevitable fall, and shockingly bruised. “Let me go!” he had commanded imperiously. “I will ride him, I will, I will, I will!”