“Oh — Leek!” Martin said, with a laugh. “You are as bad as Theo! There’s no mystery about it! Merely, Studley asked to be permitted to visit his old father, and I hate to have strangers about me.”

“Ah, he is an acquaintance of yours?”

“Why, no, not precisely! He’s Hickling’s uncle — my groom, you know! Of course, it wouldn’t do to keep him for ever, but he does well enough while Studley is away. Besides, he — he keeps my boots in good order!”

The Earl, whose Hessians shone with a mirror-like gloss, for an instant levelled his glass at Martin’s top-boots. He let it fall, and said politely: “That is certainly an advantage. Er — what does he use on them?”

“Blacking, I suppose! What does Turvey use on yours?”

“Ah, that is a secret into which I have not been admitted!”

“Champagne, perhaps?” said Martin sardonically.

“I should not be at all surprised.”

They had come by this time to the head of the Grand Stairway. Abney, emerging from the Italian Saloon, stared at them for an astonished moment, and then bowed, and said, with a good deal of feeling: “Your lordship! May I say how very happy I am to see your lordship restored to us?”

“Thank you; I am much obliged to you. Shall I find her ladyship in the Italian Saloon?”

“Indeed, yes, my lord!” Abney said, moving towards the door again. “Sir Thomas and Miss Bolderwood have called to enquire after your lordship, and are with my lady now.”

The Earl’s slender fingers closed on an arm that showed a tendency to withdraw itself. Martin said jerkily: “I’ll leave you! I have to go down to the stables!”

“In good time,” replied Gervase.

“If you think,” said Martin, in a savage undervoice, “that I want to watch Ulverston making sheep’s eyes at Marianne, you much mistake the matter!”

By this time, however, Abney had thrown open the door into the saloon, and the Earl, merely saying: “Never mind!” obliged his young relative to enter the room beside him.

Their arrival had the effect of cutting off various conversations in mid-air. Marianne, who had been exchanging sweet nothings with the Viscount in the window-embrasure, exclaimed, and ran forward, saying impulsively: “Oh, how glad I am! Everything is right again, and you are better!” She then blushed, cast a deprecating look at Martin, began to stammer something incoherent, and was rescued by Ulverston, who said cheerfully: “Hallo, Ger! How do you find yourself, dear boy?”

“St. Erth and Martin!” announced the Dowager, having verified this fact through her long-handled glasses. “I am excessively pleased to see you, St. Erth. I said it would not be long before you were upon your feet again. I had no apprehension that it could be otherwise. The Frant constitution is excellent. Someone should set a chair for St. Erth. Ah, Martin has done so! I knew I could depend upon him, for I am sure nothing could exceed his solicitude for his brother.”

Martin looked anything but grateful for this testimony, but said roughly: “You had better sit down, St. Erth, or you will go off into a swoon, or something, and I shall be blamed for it!”

Sir Thomas, who was cordially shaking hands with the Earl, said bluntly: “Now, that’s enough, young man! Least said is the soonest mended! Well, my lord, I came to see how you did, but little did I expect to find you out of your bed! Ay, you are a trifle pale, but that’s nothing! I am heartily glad to see you so stout! Such faradiddles as we have been hearing! Not that I believe a quarter of what is told me! No, no, I have been about the world a little too much for that!”

“St. Erth was shot by a poacher,” stated the Dowager. “I was not at all surprised. I thought that that was how it must have been. They should all of them be transported.”

“Well, well, if we could lay them by the heels, so they should be!” said Sir Thomas. “Do you sit down, my lord!”

While everyone was either endorsing this advice, or offering the Earl a cushion, or a stool for his feet, Martin escaped from the saloon, almost colliding in the doorway with Abney, who was on the point of ushering in two more visitors. He fell back, bowing perfunctorily, and Abney announced Mr. and Mrs. Morville.

Mrs. Morville acknowledged Martin’s bow with a nod, and a smile; Mr. Morville, who had been dragged unwillingly to render the observances of civility to his daughter’s hostess, said: “Ha, Martin!” and surveyed the rest of the company with a disillusioned eye, which the Viscount (as he informed his betrothed in a whisper) found singularly unnerving.

Mrs. Morville, meanwhile, having shaken hands with the Dowager, exchanged greetings with Sir Thomas and Marianne, smiled at her daughter, and wished that the Dowager would be a little more particular in her presentation of the two strange young gentlemen.

“My stepson, St. Erth, and Lord Ulverston!” said the Dowager generally.

Both gentlemen were bowing. Mr. Morville answered the question in his wife’s mind by staring very hard at the Viscount, and ejaculating: “Ulverston, eh? Well, well, that takes me back a good few years! How do you do? Your father and I were up at Cambridge together. You’re very like him!”

Mrs. Morville, bestowing a brief smile upon Ulverston, then turned her attention to the Earl, shaking hands with him, and expressing the conventional hope that he was recovered from his accident. Since Drusilla had not chosen to describe him to her parents, his fair countenance came as a shock to Mrs. Morville, who had expected to confront an unmistakable Frant. She almost blinked at him, found that he was smiling at her, and instantly understood why her staid daughter had lost her heart to him. Her own heart sank, for she was by no means a besotted mother, and while she truly valued Drusilla she could not find it in her to suppose that it lay within her power to engage the affections of one who, besides being a notable parti,was more handsome than (she felt) any young man had a right to be.

Nothing of this showed, however, in her manner. The Earl was expressing the sense of his obligation to Drusilla: she replied calmly that she was glad Drusilla had found an opportunity to be useful; and, seating herself on the sofa, made a little gesture to the place beside her, saying: “I am persuaded you should not stand, Lord St. Erth.”

The Dowager, who had resumed her own seat by the fire, said: “I assure you, he is perfectly well again, my dear Mrs. Morville. Young men, you know, are amazingly quick to recover from such accidents. I daresay his nerves have suffered less than mine. I have a great deal of sensibility. I do not deny it: I am not ashamed to own the truth. Dr. Malpas has been obliged to visit me every day, and in general I enjoy very good health. I inherit my constitution from my dear father. You were not acquainted with my father, Mr. Morville. I have often been sorry that you were not, for you would have been excessively pleased with one another. My father was a great reader, though not, of course, during the hunting-season.”

Fortunately, the historian was too well-used to having such remarks addressed to him to betray his feelings other than by a satirical look over the top of his spectacles, and a somewhat dryly expressed regret that he had not been privileged to meet the late Lord Dewsbury. Mrs. Morville began to talk to the Earl about his service in the Peninsula; her husband returned to his interrupted conversation with Ulverston, and the Dowager addressed one of her monologues to Sir Thomas, in which her affection for her stepson, her hatred of poachers, and the state of her nerves became inextricably mixed with her conviction that if young persons in general, and St. Erth in particular, had more regard for their elders they would take care not to incur accidents calculated to alarm them. By the time she had recollected two of her deceased parent’s moral reflections upon the selfishness of young people, Sir Thomas discovered that he must carry his daughter back to Whissenhurst. The Dowager, although she had observed with displeasure Lord Ulverston’s attentions to Marianne, had lately had other things to occupy her mind than Martin’s courtship. She said graciously: “Marianne is in very good looks. I am always pleased to welcome her to Stanyon, for she has very pretty manners, and she was most good-natured in playing at spillikins with dear little Harry and John. When I come to London I daresay I shall find her quite the belle of Almack’s — that is, if you have vouchers, and if you have not I shall be happy to procure them for you.”

“Much obliged to you!” said Sir Thomas, anything but gratefully. “No difficulty about that, however! I hope your ladyship will come to London in time to attend Lady Bolderwood’s ball. Don’t mind telling such a kind friend as you that you’ll hear me make an interesting announcement.” He observed, with satisfaction, a startled look on her face, and chuckled. “Ay, that’s the way the wind blows!” he said, with a jerk of his head towards Lord Ulverston. “We said it must remain a secret until after the little puss’s presentation, but, lord! I suppose it must be all over the county by now!”

He then took his leave, and the party broke up. Both St. Erth and Ulverston escorted the visitors downstairs, and while the Morvilles’ carriage was waited for, Sir Thomas, finding himself beside his host, shot one of his penetrating looks at him, and said: “So it was a poacher, was it? H’m! Coming it strong, but I don’t blame you! I shan’t give you my advice, because for one thing it ain’t any of my business, for another you young fellows never listen to advice, and for a third I’ve a notion you’ll manage your affairs very well for yourself. Only don’t take foolish risks, my lord! Where’s your cousin?”

“At Evesleigh,” replied the Earl.

Sir Thomas grunted. “Gone back there, has he? Well! You be careful! That’s all I’ve got to say!”

He gave the Earl no opportunity to answer him, but turned away to bid farewell to Mrs. Morville. By the time the carriage had driven off, his own and Marianne’s horses had been brought round from the stables. Lord Ulverston lifted Marianne into the saddle, good-byes were exchanged, and the Bolderwoods rode away. Ulverston, perceiving that the Earl’s thoughtful gaze was following Sir Thomas, said: “Regular quiz, ain’t he? Rather wondered at first what m’father would say to him, but I daresay they’ll deal famously together. He’s no fool, Sir Thomas: in fact, he’s a devilish knowing cove!”

“I begin to think you are right,” said the Earl slowly. “Devilish knowing! — unless I misunderstood him.”

Chapter 20

The effect of Sir Thomas’s morning-call could hardly have been said to have been happy. Its repercussions were felt mostly by the long-suffering Miss Morville, who was obliged not only to lend a sympathetic ear to the Dowager’s tedious and embittered animadversions on the duplicity of Lord Ulverston and the Bolderwoods, but also to dissuade her from casting repulsive looks at Ulverston, and from mentioning more than once a day that the task of entertaining her stepson’s friends at the Castle imposed a strain upon her enfeebled nerves which they could ill support.

Both Martin and Gervase came in for their share of her comprehensive complaints, for she could not suppose that Marianne would have rejected Martin’s suit, had he put himself to the trouble of using a little address in its prosecution; while as for Gervase, the more she considered his behaviour the greater grew her conviction that he was responsible for every evil which had fallen upon the family, dating from the shocking occasion when he had permitted a four-year old Martin to play with a tinder-box, and so set fire to the nursery blinds: an accident which would have led to the total demolition of the Castle had the nurse not entered the room at that moment, and beaten out the flames with a coal-shovel.

It was not the Earl’s practice to argue with his stepmother, but this accusation was so unexpected that he was surprised into exclaiming: “But I wasn’t there!”

He would have done better to have held his peace. The Dowager very well recollected that he had not been there, for it was what she had been saying for ever: he liked his brother so little that even when they had been children he had always preferred to slip away rather than to play with him. She had known how it would be from the outset; she had not the least doubt that he had brought Ulverston to Stanyon merely to ruin poor Martin’s chances of marrying an heiress; and now that she came to think of it, she had never liked Ulverston, besides knowing a very discreditable story about his Uncle Lucius.