It was not mere obedience that held Richard from the aims of his young wife:  nor was it this new knightly enterprise he had presumed to undertake.  Hero as he was, a youth, open to the insane promptings of hot blood, he was not a fool.  There had been talk between him and Mrs. Doria of his mother.  Now that he had broken from his father, his heart spoke for her.  She lived, he knew:  he knew no more.  Words painfully hovering along the borders of plain speech had been communicated to him, filling him with moody imaginings.  If he thought of her, the red was on his face, though he could not have said why.  But now, after canvassing the conduct of his father, and throwing him aside as a terrible riddle, he asked Mrs. Doria to tell him of his other parent.  As softly as she could she told the story.  To her the shame was past:  she could weep for the poor lady.  Richard dropped no tears.  Disgrace of this kind is always present to a son, and, educated as he had been, these tidings were a vivid fire in his brain.  He resolved to hunt her out, and take her from the man.  Here was work set to his hand.  All her dear husband did was right to Lucy.  She encouraged him to stay for that purpose, thinking it also served another.  There was Tom Bakewell to watch over Lucy:  there was work for him to do.  Whether it would please his father he did not stop to consider.  As to the justice of the act, let us say nothing.

On Ripton devolved the humbler task of grubbing for Sandoe’s place of residence; and as he was unacquainted with the name by which the poet now went in private, his endeavours were not immediately successful.  The friends met in the evening at Lady Blandish’s town-house, or at the Foreys’, where Mrs. Doria procured the reverer of the Royal Martyr, and staunch conservative, a favourable reception.  Pity, deep pity for Richard’s conduct Ripton saw breathing out of Mrs. Doria.  Algernon Feverel treated his nephew with a sort of rough commiseration, as a young fellow who had run off the road.

Pity was in Lady Blandish’s eyes, though for a different cause.  She doubted if she did well in seconding his father’s unwise scheme—­supposing him to have a scheme.  She saw the young husband encompassed by dangers at a critical time.  Not a word of Mrs. Mount had been breathed to her, but the lady had some knowledge of life.  She touched on delicate verges to the baronet in her letters, and he understood her well enough.  “If he loves this person to whom he has bound himself, what fear for him?  Or are you coming to think it something that bears the name of love because we have to veil the rightful appellation?” So he responded, remote among the mountains.  She tried very hard to speak plainly.  Finally he came to say that he denied himself the pleasure of seeing his son specially, that he for a time might be put to the test the lady seemed to dread.  This was almost too much for Lady Blandish.  Love’s charity boy so loftily serene now that she saw him half denuded—­a thing of shanks and wrists—­was a trial for her true heart.