“It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope,” said the baronet, not so well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that had brought the youth to him in such haste.

“I’m ready,” replied Richard.  “I shall be in time to return by the last train to-night.  I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a rest.”

His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling with an eagerness that might pass for appetite.

“All well at Raynham?” said the baronet.

“Quite, sir.”

“Nothing new?”

“Nothing, sir.”

“The same as when I left?”

“No change whatever!”

“I shall be glad to get back to the old place,” said the baronet.  “My stay in town has certainly been profitable.  I have made some pleasant acquaintances who may probably favour us with a visit there in the late autumn—­people you may be pleased to know.  They are very anxious to see Raynham.”

“I love the old place,” cried Richard.  “I never wish to leave it.”

“Why, boy, before I left you were constantly begging to see town.”

“Was I, sir?  How odd!  Well!  I don’t want to remain here.  I’ve seen enough of it.”

“How did you find your way to me?”

Richard laughed, and related his bewilderment at the miles of brick, and the noise, and the troops of people, concluding, “There’s no place like home!”

The baronet watched his symptomatic brilliant eyes, and favoured him with a double-dealing sentence—­

“To anchor the heart by any object ere we have half traversed the world, is youth’s foolishness, my son.  Reverence time!  A better maxim that than your Horatian.”

“He knows all!” thought Richard, and instantly drew away leagues from his father, and threw up fortifications round his love and himself.

Dinner over, Richard looked hurriedly at his watch, and said, with much briskness, “I shall just be in time, sir, if we walk.  Will you come with me to the station?”

The baronet did not answer.

Richard was going to repeat the question, but found his father’s eyes fixed on him so meaningly that he wavered, and played with his empty glass.

“I think we will have a little more claret,” said the baronet.

Claret was brought, and they were left alone.

The baronet then drew within arm’s-reach of his son, and began: 

“I am not aware what you may have thought of me, Richard, during the years we have lived together; and indeed I have never been in a hurry to be known to you; and, if I had died before my work was done, I should not have complained at losing half my reward, in hearing you thank me.  Perhaps, as it is, I never may.  Everything, save selfishness, has its recompense.  I shall be content if you prosper.”

He fetched a breath and continued:  “You had in your infancy a great loss.”  Father and son coloured simultaneously.  “To make that good to you I chose to isolate myself from the world, and devote myself entirely to your welfare; and I think it is not vanity that tells me now that the son I have reared is one of the most hopeful of God’s creatures.  But for that very reason you are open to be tempted the most, and to sink the deepest.  It was the first of the angels who made the road to hell.”