“That,” said Sir Austin, “depends.  A year, perhaps.  He is entering on it.  I shall be most grieved to lose you, Helen.  Clare is now—­how old?”

“Seventeen.”

“She is marriageable.”

“Marriageable, Austin! at seventeen! don’t name such a thing.  My child shall not be robbed of her youth.”

“Our women marry early, Helen.”

“My child shall not!”

The baronet reflected a moment.  He did not wish to lose his sister.

“As you are of that opinion, Helen,” said he, “perhaps we may still make arrangements to retain you with us.  Would you think it advisable to send Clare—­she should know discipline—­to some establishment for a few months?”

“To an asylum, Austin?” cried Mrs. Doria, controlling her indignation as well as she could.

“To some select superior seminary, Helen.  There are such to be found.”

“Austin!” Mrs. Doria exclaimed, and had to fight with a moisture in her eyes.  “Unjust! absurd!” she murmured.  The baronet thought it a natural proposition that Clare should be a bride or a schoolgirl.

“I cannot leave my child.”  Mrs. Doria trembled.  “Where she goes, I go.  I am aware that she is only one of our sex, and therefore of no value to the world, but she is my child.  I will see, poor dear, that you have no cause to complain of her.”

“I thought,” Sir Austin remarked, “that you acquiesced in my views with regard to my son.”

“Yes—­generally,” said Mrs. Doria, and felt culpable that she had not before, and could not then, tell her brother that he had set up an Idol in his house—­an Idol of flesh! more retributive and abominable than wood or brass or gold.  But she had bowed to the Idol too long—­she had too entirely bound herself to gain her project by subserviency.  She had, and she dimly perceived it, committed a greater fault in tactics, in teaching her daughter to bow to the Idol also.  Love of that kind Richard took for tribute.  He was indifferent to Clare’s soft eyes.  The parting kiss he gave her was ready and cold as his father could desire.  Sir Austin now grew eloquent to him in laudation of manly pursuits:  but Richard thought his eloquence barren, his attempts at companionship awkward, and all manly pursuits and aims, life itself, vain and worthless.  To what end? sighed the blossomless youth, and cried aloud, as soon as he was relieved of his father’s society, what was the good of anything?  Whatever he did--whichever path he selected, led back to Raynham.  And whatever he did, however wretched and wayward he showed himself, only confirmed Sir Austin more and more in the truth of his previsions.  Tom Bakewell, now the youth’s groom, had to give the baronet a report of his young master’s proceedings, in common with Adrian, and while there was no harm to tell, Tom spoke out.  “He do ride like fire every day to Pig’s Snout,” naming the highest hill in the neighbourhood, “and stand there and stare, never movin’, like a mad ’un.  And then hoam agin all slack as if he’d been beaten in a race by somebody.”