"She is a very good woman, rather priding herself on setting aside all conventionality, and bustling about the house, and keeping everyone up to their duty but her son! Is it not extraordinary? She has ruined him with stupid indulgence, and yet she is strict enough with the rest--even with----"
"Joyce!" His mother supplied the word with a smile.
"Yes, even with Joyce," he rejoined; but starting up, with an exclamation of dismay:
"Did you know Maythorne was in Clifton, mother?"
Mrs. Arundel followed the direction of her son's eyes, and there on the broken, uneven slopes which lay before Sion Hill, came Gratian, chatting gaily to a man of some six-and-thirty or forty, who answered very well to the description a poet gave some years after of "the dandy despot, the jewelled mass of millinery, oiled and curled, and smelling of musk and insolence."
"I am very sorry he has come to Clifton," Mrs. Arundel said quickly. "I suppose he is at the hotel."
"Gratian looks satisfied. I hope I shan't get very savage with him, mother. When we last parted it was the night when I--but I need not talk about it--he got that weak, foolish boy into his hands, and I helped to get him out, so he bears me a grudge."
"Never mind that, my dear son; and, Gilbert, remember an old watchword: 'He that ruleth his spirit is greater than he that taketh a city.'"
"I know I do flare out at Maythorne sometimes; but then was there not a cause?"
"Ah! Gilbert, there is never a cause or an excuse for wrath indulged; indignation against _wrong_ is one thing, rage against the wrong-doer another."
And now steps were heard in the hall, and Gratian's laugh. She threw open the door and said in a half-mocking tone:
Mrs. Arundel advanced to meet her brother, and greeted him kindly, but with no profession of extreme delight.
"Well, my dear sister," Lord Maythorne said, "I have taken Clifton _en route_ to Plymouth, and wandering aimlessly on the Downs I met your fair visitor, my kinswoman, Gratian. What a quaint little snuggery you have got, Annabella, upon my word; and Gratian tells me my hopeful nephew is here, looking after his future prospects, eh? A little Methodism mixed with law, eh?" And Lord Maythorne produced an elegant gold snuff-box, tapped the lid, and took a delicate pinch between his forefinger and thumb, in the most approved fashion of the time.