“Well, I am certainly hungry, but I couldn’t eat the half of it!” Desford declared.

However, when he sat down to table he found that he was hungrier than he had supposed, and he ate rather more than half of what was set before him. The claret, though not of the first growth, was better than the landlord’s somewhat slighting description of it had led him to expect; and the brandy with which he rounded off the repast was a true Cognac. Under its benign influence he began to take a more hopeful view of his immediate prospects, and to consider what his next move should be. He decided that the best thing he could do would be to visit first the Sulphur Well, and next, if he failed to come by any intelligence of Lord Nettlecombe’s whereabouts there, to discover the names and directions of the doctors practising in Harrowgate.

The experiences of the first wearing day he had spent in his search for Nettlecombe prevented him from feeling either surprise or any marked degree of disappointment when his enquiries at the Sulphur Well were productive of nothing more than regretful head-shakes; but he was a trifle daunted when presented with a list of the Harrowgate doctors: he had not thought that so many medical men were to be found in so small a spa. He betook himself to the Crown to study the list over a fortifying tankard of Home Brewed; and, having crossed off from it those who advertised themselves as Surgeons, and consulted a plan of both High and Low Harrowgate, which he had had the forethought to buy that morning, set out on foot to visit the first of the Lower town’s practitioners which figured on the list. Neither this member of the Faculty, nor the next on his list, numbered Lord Nettlecombe amongst his patients, but just as the Viscount was contemplating with disgust the prospect of spending the rest of the day in what he was fast coming to believe was an abortive search, fortune at last smiled upon him: Dr Easton, third on the list, not only knew where Nettlecombe was lodging, but had actually been summoned to attend him, when his lordship had suffered a severe attack of colic. “As far as I am aware,” he said, austerely regarding Desford over the top of his spectacles, “his lordship has not removed from that lodging, but since he has not again sought my services I do not claim him as a patient. I will go further! Should he again request my attendance upon him I should have no hesitation in recommending him to consult some other physician more willing than I am, perhaps, to being told that his diagnosis is false, and to having his prescription spurned!”

Resisting an absurd but strong impulse to offer Dr Easton an apology for Nettlecombe’s rudeness, Desford took his leave, saying that he was much obliged to him, and assuring him, with a disarming smile, that he had all his sympathy.

It transpired that Nettlecombe’s lodging was in one of the larger boarding-houses in the Lower town. It had an air of somewhat gloomy respectability, and was presided over by an angular lady whose appearance carried the suggestion that she must be in mourning for a near relation, since she wore a bombasine dress of sombre hue, without frills, or lace, or even a ribbon to lighten its sobriety. Her cap was of starched cambric, tied tightly beneath her chin; and as much of her hair as was allowed to be seen was iron-gray, and smoothed into bands as severe as her expression. She put Desford forcibly in mind of the dame in the village that lay beyond Wolversham who terrified the rural children into good behaviour and the rudiments of learning; and he would not have been in the least surprised to have seen a birch-rod on the high desk behind which she stood.

She was talking to an elderly couple, whose decorous bearing and prim voices exactly matched their surroundings, when Desford entered the house, but she broke off the conversation to direct a piercing look of appraisal at him, which made him feel that at any moment she would tell him that his neckcloth was crooked, or demand to know if he had washed his hands before venturing into her presence. His lips twitched, and his eyes began to dance, upon which her countenance relaxed, and, excusing herself to the elderly couple, she came towards him, saying, with a slight bow: “Yes, sir? What may I have the honour to do for you? If it is accommodation you are seeking, I regret I have none to offer: my house is always fully booked for the season.”

“No, I don’t want accommodation,” he replied. “But I believe you have Lord Nettlecombe staying here. Is that so?”

Her face hardened again; she said grimly: “Yes, sir, it is so!”

It was apparent that the presence of Lord Nettlecombe in her house afforded her no gratification, and that Desford’s enquiry had caused whatever good opinion she had formed of himself to wither at birth. When he requested her to have his card taken to my lord she gave a small, contemptuous sniff, and without deigning to reply, turned away to call sharply to a waiter just about to enter the long room: “George! Conduct this gentleman to Lord Nettlecombe’s parlour!”

She then favoured the Viscount with a haughty inclination of her head, and resumed her conversation with the elderly couple.

Amused, but also a trifle ruffled by this cavalier treatment, Desford was on the verge of telling her that when he had handed her his card he had intended it to be taken to Lord Nettlecombe, not laid on her desk, when it occurred to him that perhaps it would be as well not to give his lordship the opportunity to refuse to see him, so he suppressed the impulse to give this ridiculously uppish creature a set-down, and followed the waiter up the stairs, and along a corridor. The waiter, whose air of profound gloom argued a life of intolerable slavery, but was probably due to the pain of flat feet,. stopped outside a door at the end of the corridor, and asked what name he should say, and, upon learning it, opened the door, and repeated it in a raised, indifferent voice.

“Eh? What’s that?” demanded Lord Nettlecombe wrathfully. “I won’t see him! What the devil do you mean by bringing people up here without my leave? Tell him to go away!”

“I fear you will be obliged to do that yourself, sir,” said Desford, shutting the door upon the waiter, and coming forward. “Pray accept my apologies for not sending up my card! It was my intention to have done so, but the formidable lady below-stairs thought otherwise.”

“That damned pigeon-fancier!” ejaculated his lordship fiercely. “She had the curst impudence to try to diddle me! But I’m no pigeon for her plucking, and so I told her! Gull-catcher! Slip-gibbet! Nail!” He broke off suddenly. “What do you want?” he snarled.

“A few words with you, sir,” said the Viscount coolly.

“Well, I don’t want to talk to you! I don’t want to talk to anyone! If your name’s Desford you must be old Wroxton’s son, and he’s no friend of mine, I’ll have you know!”

“Oh, I do know it!” responded the Viscount, laying his hat, his gloves, and his malacca cane down on the table.

This indication that he meant to prolong his visit infuriated Nettlecombe so much that he said, in a kind of scream: “Don’t do that! Go away! Do you want to send me off the hooks? I’m a sick man! Worn to the bone with all the worry and trouble I’ve had! Burnt to the socket, damn it! I won’t have strangers thrust in on me, I tell you!”

“I’m sorry you are in such indifferent health,” said Desford politely, “I will try not to tax your strength, but I have a duty to discharge which closely concerns you, and I believe—”

“If you’ve come from my son Jonas you’ve wasted your time!” interrupted Nettlecombe, his pale eyes sharp with suspicion.

“I have not,” said Desford, his calm voice in marked contrast to Nettlecombe’s shrill accents. “I have come on behalf of your granddaughter.”

“That’s a damned quibble!” instantly exclaimed his lordship. “Jonas may take care of his brats himself, and so you may tell him! I wash my hands of the whole brood!”

“I am not speaking of Mr Jonas Steane’s daughters, sir, but of your younger son’s only child.”

My lord’s bony hands clenched the arms of his chair convulsively. “I have no younger son!”

“From what I have been able to discover I fear that that may be true,” said Desford.

“Ha! Dead, is he? And a good thing if he is!” said Nettlecombe viciously. “He’s been dead to me for years, and if you think I’ll have anything to do with any child of his you’re mistaken!”

“I do think it, and I am persuaded that I’m not mistaken, sir. When you have heard in what a desperate situation she has been left I cannot believe that you will refuse to help her. Her mother died when she was a child, and her father placed her in a school in Bath. Until a few years ago, he paid the necessary fees, though not always, I fancy, very punctually, and from time to time he visited her. But the payments and the visits ceased—”

“I know all this!” interrupted Nettlecombe. “The woman wrote to me! Demanded that I should pay for the girl! A damned insolent letter I thought it, too! I told her to apply to the girl’s maternal relations, for she wouldn’t get a groat out of me!”

“She obeyed you, sir, she applied to Lady Bugle, but I don’t think she got a groat out of her either,” said Desford dryly. “Lady Bugle, perceiving an opportunity to provide herself with an unpaid servant, took Miss Steane to her home in Hampshire, under an odious pretence of charity, for which she demanded a slavish gratitude, and unending service, not only for herself, but for every other member of her large family. Miss Steane’s disposition is compliant and affectionate: she had every wish in the world to repay her aunt for having given her a home, and uncomplainingly performed every task set before her, from hemming sheets, or running errands for her cousins, to taking charge of the nursery-children. And I daresay she would still be doing so, perfectly happily, had her aunt treated her with kindness. But she did not, and the poor child became so unhappy that she ran away, with the intention of appealing to you, sir, for protection.”

Nettlecombe, who had listened to this speech with a scowl on his brow, punctuating it with muttered comments, and fidgeting restlessly in his chair, burst out angrily: “It’s no concern of mine! I warned that scoundrelly son of mine how it would be if he didn’t mend his ways. He made his bed, and he must lie on it!”

“But it is not he who is lying on it,” said the Viscount. “It is his daughter who is the innocent victim of her father’s misdeeds.”

“You should read your Bible, young man!” retorted Nettlecombe on a note of triumph. “The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children! What about that, eh?”

A pungent reply sprang to the Viscount’s lips, but it remained unuttered, for at that moment the door opened, and a middle-aged and buxom woman sailed into the room, saying in far from refined accents: “Well, this is a surprise, to be sure! When that old Tabby downstairs, which has the impudence to call herself Mrs Nunny, just as though a rabbit-pole like she is ever had a husband, told me my lord had a gentleman visiting him you could have knocked me down with a feather, for in general he don’t receive, not being in very high force. Though we shall soon have him quite rumtitum again, shan’t we, my lord?”

My lord responded to this sprightly prophecy with a growl. As for Desford, the newcomer’s surprise was as nothing to his, for she spoke as though she were well-acquainted with him, and he knew that he had never before seen her. He wondered who the devil she could be. Her manner towards Nettlecombe suggested that she might be a nurse, hired to attend him during recuperation from some illness but a stunned look at the lavishly plumed and high-crowned bonnet set upon her brassy curls rapidly put that idea to flight. No nurse wearing such an exaggeratedly fashionable bonnet would ever have been allowed to cross the threshold of a sick-room; nor would she have dreamt of arraying herself (even is she could have afforded to do so) in a purple gown with a demi-train, and trimmed with knots of ribbon.

His blank astonishment must have shown itself in his face, for she simpered, and said archly: “I have the advantage of you, haven’t I? You don’t know who I am, but I know who you are, because I’ve seen your card. So my lord don’t have to tell me.”

Thus put pointedly in mind of his social obligations Lord Nettlecombe said sourly: “Lord Desford—Lady Nettlecombe. And you’ve no need to look like that!” he added, as Desford blinked incredulously at him. “My marriage doesn’t have to meet with your approval!”