‘What is it?’ she asked.  ’Only tell me.  You know I wish for nothing so much as to help you.’

He did confess that there was nothing he should like better, if Archie would not be all the worse another time, whenever he should catch him alone.

’But surely, Gilbert, he is not always lying in ambush for you, like a cat for a mouse.  You can’t be his sole game.’

’No, but he is coming or going, or out with his gun, and he will often come part of the way with me, and he is such a droll fellow!’

Albinia thought that there was but one cure.  To leave Gilbert daily exposed to the temptation must be wrong, and she laid the case before Mr. Kendal with so much earnestness, that he allowed that it would be better to send the boy from home; and in the meantime, Albinia obtained that Mr. Kendal should ride some way on the Tremblam road with his son in the morning, so as to convoy him out of reach of the tempter; whilst she tried to meet him in the afternoon, and managed so that he should be seldom without the hope of meeting her.

Albinia’s likings had taken a current absolutely contrary to all her preconceived notions; Sophia, with her sullen truth, was respected, but it was not easy to like her even as well as Lucy, who, though pert and empty, had much good-nature and good-temper, and was not indocile; while Gilbert, in spite of a weak, shallow character, habits of deception, and low ungentlemanly tastes, had won her affection, and occupied the chief of her time and thoughts; and she dreaded the moment of parting with him, as removing the most available and agreeable of her young companions.

That moment of parting, though acknowledged to be expedient, did not approach.  Gilbert, could not be sent to a public school without risk and anxiety which his father did not like, and which would have been horror to his grandmother; and Albinia herself did not feel certain that he was fit for it, nor that it was her part to enforce it.  She wrote to her brother, and found that he likewise thought a tutor would be a safe alternative; but then he must be a perfect man in a perfect climate, and Mr. Kendal was not the man to make researches.  Mr. Dusautoy mentioned one clergyman who took pupils, Maurice Ferrars another, but there was something against each.  Mr. Kendal wrote four letters, and was undecided—­a third was heard of, but the locality was doubtful, and the plan went off, because Mr. Kendal could not make up his mind to go thirty miles to see the place, and talk to a stranger.

Albinia found that her power did not extend beyond driving him from ‘I’ll see about it,’ to ‘Yes, by all means.’  Action was a length to which he could not be brought.  Mr. Nugent was very anxious that he should qualify as a magistrate since a sensible, highly-principled man was much wanted counterbalance Admiral Osborn’s misdirected, restless activity and the lower parts of the town were in a dreadful state.  Mrs. Nugent talked to Albinia, and she urged it in vain.  To come out of his study, examine felons, contend with the Admiral, and to meet all the world at the quarter sessions, was abhorrent to him, and he silenced her almost with sternness.