‘I won’t.  Not till she’s married.’

‘Well, Tom, we’re friends now?’

‘Not aware I’ve ever done you any harm, my lady.’

‘Look me in the face.’

The trial was hard for him.  Though she had been five-and-twenty years a wife, she was still very handsome:  but he was not going to be melted, and when the perverse old fellow obeyed her, it was with an aspect of resolute disgust that would have made any other woman indignant.  Lady Jocelyn laughed.

’Why, Tom, your brother Andrew’s here, and makes himself comfortable with us.  We rode by Brook’s farm the other day.  Do you remember Copping’s pond—­how we dragged it that night?  What days we had!’

Old Tom tugged once or twice at his imprisoned fist, while these youthful frolics of his too stupid self and the wild and beautiful Miss Bonner were being recalled.

‘I remember!’ he said savagely, and reaching the door hurled out:  ’And I remember the Bull-dogs, too! servant, my lady.’  With which he effected a retreat, to avoid a ringing laugh he heard in his ears.

Lady Jocelyn had not laughed.  She had done no more than look and smile kindly on the old boy.  It was at the Bull-dogs, a fall of water on the borders of the park, that Tom Cogglesby, then a hearty young man, had been guilty of his folly:  had mistaken her frank friendliness for a return of his passion, and his stubborn vanity still attributed her rejection of his suit to the fact of his descent from a cobbler, or, as he put it, to her infernal worship of rank.

‘Poor old Tom!’ said her ladyship, when alone.  ’He ’s rough at the rind, but sound at the core.’  She had no idea of the long revenge Old Tom cherished, and had just shaped into a plot to be equal with her for the Bull-dogs.

CHAPTER XXIX

PRELUDE TO AN ENGAGEMENT

Money was a strong point with the Elburne brood.  The Jocelyns very properly respected blood; but being, as Harry, their youngest representative, termed them, poor as rats, they were justified in considering it a marketable stuff; and when they married they married for money.  The Hon. Miss Jocelyn had espoused a manufacturer, who failed in his contract, and deserved his death.  The diplomatist, Melville, had not stepped aside from the family traditions in his alliance with Miss Black, the daughter of a bold bankrupt, educated in affluence; and if he touched nothing but L5000 and some very pretty ringlets, that was not his fault.  Sir Franks, too, mixed his pure stream with gold.  As yet, however, the gold had done little more than shine on him; and, belonging to expectancy, it might be thought unsubstantial.  Beckley Court was in the hands of Mrs. Bonner, who, with the highest sense of duty toward her only living child, was the last to appreciate Lady Jocelyn’s entire absence of demonstrative affection, and severely reprobated