“Or even if she have.  Witness mamma’s sighs over Mary’s nurses.”

“I thought it was the common lot.  You’ve not seen the dining-room.”  And the full honours were done.  They were pleasant rooms, still unpapered, and the furniture chiefly of amber-coloured varnished deal; the drawing-room, chiefly with green furniture, with only a few brighter dashes here and there, and a sociable amount of comfortable litter already.  The study was full of new shelves and old books, and across the window-sill lay a gray figure, with a book and a sheet of paper.

“You here, Terry!  I thought you were gone with Rose,” said Julius, as the boy rose to greet Miss Bowater.

“She said I need not, and I hate those garden-parties,” said Terry; and they relieved him of their presence as soon as Jenny had paid her respects to the favourite prints and photographs on the walls.

“He has a passion for the history of Poland just now,” said Julius.  “Sobieski is better company than he would meet at Duddingstone, I suspect—­poor fellow!  Lord Rathforlane has been so much excited by hearing of Driver’s successes as a coach, as to desire Terry to read with him for the Royal Engineers.  The boys must get off his hands as soon as possible, he says, and Terry, being cleverest, must do so soonest; but the boy has seen the dullest side of soldiering, and hates it.  His whole soul is set on scholarship.  I am afraid it is a great mistake.”

“Can’t you persuade him?”

“We have both written; but Rose has no great hopes of the result.  I wish he could follow his bent.”

“Yes,” said Jenny, lingering as she looked towards Church-house, “the young instinct ought not to be repressed.”

Julius knew that she was recollecting how Archie Douglas had entreated to go to sea, and the desire had been quashed because he was an only son.  His inclination to speak was as perilous as if he had been Rosamond herself, and he did not feel it unfortunate that Jenny found she must no longer stay away from home.

CHAPTER XXII Times Out of Joint

Alte der Meere,
Komm und hore;
Meine Frau, die Ilsebill,
Will nicht als ich will!

Life at Compton Poynsett was different from what it had been when the two youngest sons had been at home, and Julius and Rosamond in the house.  The family circle had grown much more stiff and quiet, and the chief difference caused by Mrs. Poynsett’s presence was that Raymond was deprived of his refuge in her room.  Cecil had taken a line of polite contempt.  There was always a certain languid amount of indifferent conversation, ‘from the teeth outward,’ as Rosamond said.  Every home engagement was submitted to the elder lady with elaborate scrupulousness, almost like irony.  Visitors in the house or invitations out of it, were welcome breaks, and the whirl of society which vaguely alarmed Joanna Bowater was a relief to the inhabitants of the Hall.