Sir Everard Kingsland met with a very cold reception from his lady mother upon his return to Devonshire.  She listened in still disdain to his glowing accounts of the marvels the summer would work in the grand old place.

“And all this for the penniless daughter of a half-pay captain; and Lady Louise might have been his wife.”

Sir Everard ran heedlessly on.

“You and Milly shall retain your old rooms, of course,” he said, “and have them altered or not, just as you choose.  Harrie’s room shall be in the south wing—­she likes a sunny, southern prospect—­and the winter and summer drawing-rooms must be completely refurnished; and the conservatory has been sadly neglected of late, and the oak paneling in the dining-room wants touching up.  Hadn’t you better give all the orders for your own apartments yourself?  The others I will attend to.”

“My orders are already given,” Lady Kingsland said, with frigid hauteur.  “My jointure house is to be fitted up.  Before you return from your honey-moon I will have quitted Kingsland Court with my daughter.  Permit Mildred and me to retain our present apartments unaltered until that time; then the future Lady Kingsland can have the old rooms disfigured with as much gilding and stucco and ormolu as she pleases.”

The young man’s fair face blackened with an angry scowl as he listened to the taunting, spiteful speech.  But he restrained himself.

“There is no necessity for your withdrawal from your old home.  If you leave, it will be against my wish.  Neither my wife nor I could ever desire such a step.”

“Your wife!  Does she take state upon herself already?  To you and your wife, Sir Everard Kingsland, I return my humble thanks, but even Kingsland Court is not large enough for two mistresses.  I will never stand aside and see the pauper daughter of the half-pay captain rule where I ruled once.”

She swept majestically out of the room as she launched her last smarting shaft, leaving her son with face of suppressed rage, to recover his temper as best he might.

“He will never ask me again,” she thought.  “I know his nature too well.”

And he did not.  He went about his work with stern determination, never consulting her, never asking advice, or informing her of any project—­always deferential, always studiously polite.

There was one person, however, at the Court who made up, by the warmth of her greeting and the fervor of her sympathy, for any lack on his mother’s part.  It was Miss Sybilla Silver who somehow had grown to be as much a fixture there as the marble and bronze statues.

She had written to find her friends in Plymouth, or she said so, and failed, and she had managed to make herself so useful to my lady that my lady was very glad to keep her.  She could make caps like a Parisian milliner; she could dress her exquisitely; she could read for hours in the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of dull High Church novels.  She could answer notes and sing like a siren, and she could embroider prie-dieu chairs and table-covers, and slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace like Fairy Fingers herself.