mother’s estate, and of the danger of his doing so with mine, and of religious duty and the awfulness of the position Mrs. Waddy stood in.  He certainly subdued me to very silent breathing, but did not affect me as my aunt Dorothy’s picturing of Riversley had done; and when Mrs. Waddy, reduced to an apparent submissiveness, addressed me piteously, ’Master Richmond, would you leave papa?’ I cried out, ‘No, no, never leave my papa,’ and twisted away from my aunt’s keeping.  My father’s arrival caused me to be withdrawn, but I heard his offer of his hospitality and all that was his; and subsequently there was loud talking on his part.  I was kissed by my aunt before she went.  She whispered, ’Come to us when you are free; think of us when you pray.’  She was full of tears.  Mr. Bannerbridge patted my head.

The door closed on them and I thought it was a vision that had passed.  But now my father set my heart panting with questions as to the terrible possibility of us two ever being separated.  In some way he painted my grandfather so black that I declared earnestly I would rather die than go to Riversley; I would never utter the name of the place where there was evil speaking of the one I loved dearest.  ‘Do not, my son,’ he said solemnly, ‘or it parts us two.’  I repeated after him, ’I am a Roy and not a Beltham.’  It was enough to hear that insult and shame had been cast on him at Riversley for me to hate the name of the place.  We cried and then laughed together, and I must have delivered myself with amazing eloquence, for my father held me at arms’ length and said, ’Richie, the notion of training you for a General commandership of the British army is a good one, but if you have got the winning tongue, the woolsack will do as well for a whisper in the ear of the throne.  That is our aim, my son.  We say,—­you will not acknowledge our birth, you shall acknowledge our worth.’  He complained bitterly of my aunt Dorothy bringing a lawyer to our house.  The sins of Mrs. Waddy were forgiven her, owing to her noble resistance to the legal gentleman’s seductive speech.  So I walked up and down stairs with the kings of England looking at me out of the coloured windows quietly for a week; and then two ugly men entered the house, causing me to suffer a fearful oppression, though my father was exceedingly kind to them and had beds provided for them, saying that they were very old retainers of his.

But the next day our scarlet livery appeared.  After exacting particular attention to his commands, my father quitted Mrs. Waddy, and we mounted the carriage, laughing at her deplorable eyes and prim lips, which he imitated for my amusement.  ‘A load is off my head,’ he remarked.  He asked me if splendour did not fatigue me also.  I caught the answer from his face and replied that it did, and that I should like to go right on to Dipwell ‘The Burgundy sleeps safe there,’ said my father, and thought over it.  We had an extraordinary