short time she was prowling about the passages again.  Richard had slighted and offended the little lady, and was to be asked whether he did not repent such conduct toward his cousin; not to be asked whether he had forgotten to receive his birthday kiss from her; for, if he did not choose to remember that, Miss Clare would never remind him of it, and to-night should be his last chance of a reconciliation.  Thus she meditated, sitting on a stair, and presently heard Richard’s voice below in the hall, shouting for supper.

“Master Richard has returned,” old Benson the butler tolled out intelligence to Sir Austin.

“Well?” said the baronet.

“He complains of being hungry,” the butler hesitated, with a look of solemn disgust.

“Let him eat.”

Heavy Benson hesitated still more as he announced that the boy had called for wine.  It was an unprecedented thing.  Sir Austin’s brows were portending an arch, but Adrian suggested that he wanted possibly to drink his birthday, and claret was conceded.

The boys were in the vortex of a partridge-pie when Adrian strolled in to them.  They had now changed characters.  Richard was uproarious.  He drank a health with every glass; his cheeks were flushed and his eyes brilliant.  Ripton looked very much like a rogue on the tremble of detection, but his honest hunger and the partridge-pie shielded him awhile from Adrian’s scrutinizing glance.  Adrian saw there was matter for study, if it were only on Master Ripton’s betraying nose, and sat down to hear and mark.

“Good sport, gentlemen, I trust to hear?” he began his quiet banter, and provoked a loud peal of laughter from Richard.

“Ha, ha!  I say, Rip:  ‘Havin’ good sport, gentlemen, are ye?’ You remember the farmer!  Your health, parson!  We haven’t had our sport yet.  We’re going to have some first-rate sport.  Oh, well! we haven’t much show of birds.  We shot for pleasure, and returned them to the proprietors.  You’re fond of game, parson!  Ripton is a dead shot in what Cousin Austin calls the Kingdom of ‘would-have-done’ and ‘might-have-been.’  Up went the birds, and cries Rip, ‘I’ve forgotten to load!’ Oh, ho!—­Rip! some more claret.—­Do just leave that nose of yours alone.—­Your health, Ripton Thompson!  The birds hadn’t the decency to wait for him, and so, parson, it’s their fault, and not Rip’s, you haven’t a dozen brace at your feet.  What have you been doing at home, Cousin Rady?”

“Playing Hamlet, in the absence of the Prince of Denmark.  The day without you, my dear boy, must be dull, you know.”

  “’He speaks:  can I trust what he says is sincere? 
   There’s an edge to his smile that cuts much like a sneer.’