associates.  There was some hope that the whole thing might be brought to light by this means.  For all that the Duke cared nothing.  If only Silverbridge and Tifto could for the future be kept apart, as far as he and his were concerned, good would have been done rather than harm.  While they were in this way away together on the Rhine it was decided that very soon after their return to England Phineas and Mrs Finn should go down to Matching.

When the Duke arrived in London his sons were not there.  Gerald had gone back to Oxford, and Silverbridge had merely left an address.  Then his sister wrote him a very short letter.  ’Papa will be so glad if you will come to Matching.  Do come.’  Of course he came, and presented himself some few days after the Duke’s arrival.

But he dreaded this meeting with his father which, however, let it be postponed for ever so long, must come at last.  In reference to this he made a great resolution,—­that he would go instantly as soon as he might be sent for.  When the summons came he started; but, though he was by courtesy an Earl, and by fact was not only a man but a Member of Parliament, though he was half engaged to marry one young lady and ought to have been engaged to marry another, though he had come to an age at which Pitt was a great minister and Pope a great poet, still his heart was in his boots, as a schoolboy’s might be, when he was driven up to the house at Matching.

In two minutes before he had washed the dust from his face, and hands, he was with his father.  ’I am glad to see you, Silverbridge’s aid the Duke, putting out his hand.

‘I hope to see you well, sir.’

’Fairly well.  Thank you.  Travelling I think agrees with me.  I miss, not my comforts, but a certain knowledge of how things are going on, which comes to us I think through our skins when we are at home.  A feeling of absence pervades me.  Otherwise I like it.  And you,—­what have you been doing?’

‘Shooting a little,’ said Silverbridge, in a mooncalf tone.

’Shooting a great deal, if what I see in the newspapers be true about Mr Reginald Dobbes and his party.  I presume it is a religion to offer up hecatombs to the autumnal gods,—­who must surely take a keener delight in blood and slaughter than those bloodthirsty gods of old.’

‘You should talk to Gerald about that, sir.’

’Has Gerald been so great at his sacrifices?  How will that suit with Plato?  What does Mr Simcox say?’

’Of course they were all to have a holiday just at that time.  But Gerald is reading.  I fancy that Gerald is clever.’

‘And he is a great Nimrod?’

‘As to hunting.’

’Nimrod I fancy got his game in any way that he could compass it.  I do not doubt but that he trapped foxes.’

’With a rifle at deer, say for four hundred yards, I would back Gerald against any man of his age in England or Scotland.’