If the carriage had not stopped as he spoke Cecil would not have uttered the thought that smote her, namely, that his desire was on behalf, not of his wife, but of his mother, to whom he was ready to sacrifice her happiness without a pang.  She did not see that he could imagine no greater happiness for her than a thorough love of his mother.

They certainly were not the happiest couple present as they walked up-stairs, looking like a model husband and wife, with their name echoing from landing to landing.

If any expression savouring of slang could possibly be applied to Raymond, he might be said to be struck all of a heap by his wife’s proposition.  He had never even thought of the possibility of making a home anywhere but at Compton Poynsett, or of his wife wishing that he should do so; and proverbial sayings about the incompatability of relatives-in-law suddenly assumed a reasonableness that he could not bear to remember.

But his courtesy and sense of protection, trained by a woman of the old school, would not suffer him to relax his attention to his wife.  Though he was very anxious to get back to the house, he would not quit her neighbourhood till he had found Frank and intrusted her to him.

He was not happy about Frank.  The youth was naturally of an intellectual and poetical temperament, and had only cared for horses and field-sports as any healthy lad growing up in a country house must enjoy them; and Raymond had seen him introduced to the style of men whom he thought would be thoroughly congenial to him, and not unlikely to lead him on to make a mark in the world.

But that unfortunate Vivian attachment stood in the way; Sir Harry and his elder daughter ignored it entirely, but did not forbid Frank the house; though Lady Tyrrell took care, as only she could do, that Eleonora should never have ten minutes private conversation with him, either at home or abroad.  Even in a crowd, a ball, or garden-party, the vigilant sister had her means of breaking into any kind of confidence; and Frank was continually tantalized by the pursuit.  It could not but unsettle him, and draw him into much more gaiety than was compatible with the higher pursuits his mother had expected of him; and what was worse, it threw him into Sir Harry Vivian’s set, veteran roues, and younger men who looked up to their knowingness and listened to their good stories.

What amount of harm it was doing Raymond could not guess.  He had known it all himself, and had escaped unscathed, but he did not fear the less for his younger brother, and he only hoped that the inducement to mingle with such society would be at an end before Frank had formed a taste for the habits that there prevailed.