But no such happy order had as yet been given; and, as far as the family could foresee, paterfamilias intended to pass the winter with them at Courcy.  The guests, as I have said, were all gone, and none but the family were in the house when her ladyship waited upon her lord one morning at twelve o’clock, a few days after Mr Dale’s visit to the castle.  He always breakfasted alone, and after breakfast found in a French novel and a cigar what solace those innocent recreations were still able to afford him.  When the novel no longer excited him and when he was saturated with smoke, he would send for his wife.  After that, his valet would dress him.  “She gets it worse than I do,” the man declared in the servants’ hall, “and minds it a deal more.  I can give warning, and she can’t.”

“Better?  No, I ain’t better,” the husband said, in answer to his wife’s inquiries.  “I never shall be better while you keep that cook in the kitchen.”

“But where are we to get another if we send him away?”

“It’s not my business to find cooks.  I don’t know where you’re to get one.  It’s my belief you won’t have a cook at all before long.  It seems you have got two extra men into the house without telling me.”

“We must have servants, you know, when there is company.  It wouldn’t do to have Lady Dumbello here, and no one to wait on her.”

“Who asked Lady Dumbello?  I didn’t.”

“I’m sure, my dear, you liked having her here.”

“D——­ Lady Dumbello!” and then there was a pause.  The countess had no objection whatsoever to the above proposition, and was rejoiced that that question of the servants was allowed to slip aside, through the aid of her ladyship.

“Look at that letter from Porlock,” said the earl; and he pushed over to the unhappy mother a letter from her eldest son.  Of all her children he was the one she loved the best; but him she was never allowed to see under her own roof.  “I sometimes think that he is the greatest rascal with whom I ever had occasion to concern myself,” said the earl.

She took the letter and read it.  The epistle was certainly not one which a father could receive with pleasure from his son; but the disagreeable nature of its contents was the fault rather of the parent than of the child.  The writer intimated that certain money due to him had not been paid with necessary punctuality, and that unless he received it, he should instruct his lawyer to take some authorised legal proceedings.  Lord de Courcy had raised certain moneys on the family property, which he could not have raised without the co-operation of his heir, and had bound himself, in return for that co-operation, to pay a certain fixed income to his eldest son.  This he regarded as an allowance from himself; but Lord Porlock regarded it as his own, by lawful claim.  The son had not worded his letter with any affectionate phraseology.  “Lord Porlock begs to inform Lord de Courcy—­” Such had been the commencement.