The young man looked at it as if he had encountered an unexpected visitor of the adder tribe.
It was a large and handsome letter with a big red seal.
"May I?" asked Rorie, with a troubled visage, and having received his host and hostess's assent, broke the seal.
"Dear Roderick,--Is it quite kind of you to absent yourself on this your last night at home? I feel very sure that this will find you at the Abbey House, and I send the brougham at a venture. Be good enough to come home at once. The Dovedales arrived at Ashbourne quite unexpectedly this afternoon, and are dining with me on purpose to see you before you go back to Oxford. If your own good feeling did not urge you to spend this last evening with me, I wonder that Mr. and Mrs. Tempest were not kind enough to suggest to you which way your duty lay.--Yours anxiously,
Roderick crumpled the letter with an angry look. That fling at the Tempests hit him hard. Why was it that his mother was always so ready to find fault with these chosen friends of his?
"Anything wrong, Rorie?" asked the Squire.
"Nothing; except that the Dovedales are dining with my mother; and I'm to go home directly."
"If you please, ma'am, Master Vawdrey's servant has come for him," said Vixen, mimicking the style of announcement at a juvenile party. "It's quite too bad, Rorie," she went on, "I had made up my mind to beat you at pyramids. However I daresay you're very glad to have the chance of seeing your pretty cousin before you leave Hampshire."
But Rorie shook his head dolefully, made his adieux, and departed.
"It is not dogs only that are jealous!" thought Roderick, as he went home in the brougham, with all the windows down, and the cool night breeze blowing his cigar smoke away into the forest, to mix with the mist wreaths that were curling up from the soft ground. It was an offence of the highest grade to smoke in his mother's carriage; but Rorie was in an evil temper just now, and found a kind of bitter pleasure in disobedience.
The carriage bowled swiftly along the straight, well-made road, but Rorie hated riding in a brougham. The soft padded confinement galled him.
"Why couldn't she send me my dog-cart?" he asked himself indignantly.
Briarwood was a large white house in a small park. It stood on much higher ground than the Abbey House, and was altogether different from that good old relic of a bygone civilisation. Briarwood was distinctly modern. Its decorations savoured of the Regency: its furniture was old-fashioned, without being antique. The classic stiffness and straightness of the First French Empire distinguished the gilded chairs and tables in the drawing-room. There were statues by Chantrey and Canova in the spacious lofty hall; portraits by Lawrence and Romney in the dining-room; a historical picture by Copley over the elephantine mahogany sideboard; a Greek sarcophagus for wines under it.