The rector’s death when the boy was fifteen broke up the only real home he was destined to know, for Alfred was unable to settle down in any place for any length of time.  While his wife and her father were alive their influence over him was supreme:  he was like the needle drawn aside by a powerful attraction.  But now that they were gone his thoughts oscillated a while, and then reverted to Brackenhill.  For himself he was content—­he had made his choice long ago—­but little by little the idea grew up in his mind that Percival was wronged, for he, at least, was guiltless.  He secretly regretted the defiant fashion in which his boy had been christened, and made a feeble attempt to prove that, after all, Percy was an old family name.  He succeeded in establishing that a “P.  Thorne” had once existed, who of course might have been Percy, as he might have been Peter or Paul; and he tried to call his son Percy in memory of this doubtful namesake.  But the three syllables were as dear to the boy as the white flag to a Bourbon.  They identified him with the mother he dimly remembered, and proclaimed to all the world (that is, to his grandfather) that for her sake he counted Brackenhill well lost.  He triumphed, and his father was proud to be defeated.  To this day he invariably writes himself “Percival Thorne.”

Alfred, however, had his way on a more important point, and educated his son for no profession, because the head of the house needed none.  Percival acquiesced willingly enough, without a thought of the implied protest.  He was indolent, and had little or no ambition.  Since daily bread—­and, luckily, rather more than daily bread, for he was no ascetic—­was secured to him, since books were many and the world was wide, he asked nothing better than to study them.  He grew up grave, dreamy and somewhat solitary in his ways.  He seemed to have inherited something of the rector’s self-possessed and rather formal courtesy, and at twenty he looked older than his age, though his face was as smooth as a girl’s.

He was not twenty-one, when his father died suddenly of fever.  When the news reached Brackenhill the old squire was singularly affected by it.  He had been accustomed to contrast Alfred’s vigorous prime with his own advanced age, Percival’s unbroken health with Horace’s ailing boyhood, and to think mournfully of the probability that the old manor-house must go to a stranger unless he could humble himself to the son who had defied him.  But, old as he was, he had outlived his son, and he was dismayed at his isolation.  A whole generation was dead and gone, and the two lads, who were all that remained of the Thornes of Brackenhill, stood far away, as though he stretched his trembling hands to them across their fathers’ graves.  He expressly requested that Percival should come and see him, and the young man presented himself in his deep mourning.  Sissy, just sixteen, looked upon him as a sombre hero of romance, and within two days of his coming Mrs. Middleton announced that her brother was “perfectly infatuated about that boy.”