ridicule and covert contempt.  He sketched the Woman—­the strange thing made in our image, and with all our faculties—­passing to the rule of one who in taking her proved that he could not rule himself, and had no knowledge of her save as a choice morsel which he would burn the whole world, and himself in the bargain, to possess.  He harped upon the Foolish Young Fellow, till the foolish young fellow felt his skin tingle and was half suffocated with shame and rage.

After this, the baronet might be as wise as he pleased:  he had quite undone his work.  He might analyze Love and anatomize Woman.  He might accord to her her due position, and paint her fair:  he might be shrewd, jocose, gentle, pathetic, wonderfully wise:  he spoke to deaf ears.

Closing his sermon with the question, softly uttered:  “Have you anything to tell me, Richard?” and hoping for a confession, and a thorough re-establishment of confidence, the callous answer struck him cold:  “I have not.”

The baronet relapsed in his chair, and made diagrams of his fingers.

Richard turned his back on further dialogue by going to the window.  In the section of sky over the street twinkled two or three stars; shining faintly, feeling the moon.  The moon was rising:  the woods were lifting up to her:  his star of the woods would be there.  A bed of moss set about flowers in a basket under him breathed to his nostril of the woodland keenly, and filled him with delirious longing.

A succession of hard sighs brought his father’s hand on his shoulder.

“You have nothing you could say to me, my son?  Tell me, Richard!  Remember, there is no home for the soul where dwells a shadow of untruth!”

“Nothing at all, sir,” the young man replied, meeting him with the full orbs of his eyes.

The baronet withdrew his hand, and paced the room.

At last it grew impossible for Richard to control his impatience, and he said:  “Do you intend me to stay here, sir?  Am I not to return to Raynham at all to-night?”

His father was again falsely jocular: 

“What? and catch the train after giving it ten minutes’ start?”

“Cassandra will take me,” said the young man earnestly.  “I needn’t ride her hard, sir.  Or perhaps you would lend me your Winkelried?  I should be down with him in little better than three hours.”

“Even then, you know, the park-gates would be locked.”

“Well, I could stable him in the village.  Dowling knows the horse, and would treat him properly.  May I have him, sir?”