Kingston made haste to forget, as far as possible, the ominous prophecies that had descended on him, and in a rush of final activities the Season drew to an end. Gundred was beginning to turn her thoughts towards Brakelond, and as soon as the Eton and Harrow match was over, she decreed that they must take their flight thither. She had many duties to discharge there in a very short time, for, after little more than a fortnight, other duties would call them all northward to Ivescar for the hecatombs of the Twelfth. Meanwhile at Brakelond there was a new school to be opened, a Church Bazaar to be patronized, a Primrose League Fête presided over, and a horrid Radical fishmonger to be deprived of custom, with a stately autograph exposition of his crimes by the Lady Gundred Darnley. There were also a few lighter tasks, and especially a long-standing engagement to dine with the Hoope-Arkwrights. The Hoope-Arkwrights were new people of great wealth, who had bought the old house of the Restormels, beautified it regardless of expense, and ever since had been angling for the friendship of ‘the Castle.’ By Mrs. Hoope-Arkwright’s untiring benevolence towards bazaars, Gundred had at last been brought to accept an invitation to dine at Restormel. ‘Poor things,’ she said, ‘one should always give pleasure when one can, and really it will be quite enough to ask them to tea one day.’ Accordingly she had promised the Hoope-Arkwrights the favour of her presence, and graciously arranged her plans to fit in with the date of their festival. At the Eton and Harrow she shone resplendent in her favourite shades of mauve, to the devouring wrath of other mothers, who, in spite of artificial aids, only succeeded in looking their full forty or fifty. She scanned the gowns and yawned over the play, and paraded proudly about on the arm of Jim, imagining him to be delighted with the occasion, rather than in a cold sweat of horror at every moment, lest anyone else should hear the comments that his mother sent forth in her cool penetrating tones. Then, having discharged her duty by her son and the match, she drove back to Grosvenor Street and turned her thoughts to departure. Kingston would run down to Brakelond in the motor. Gundred enlarged on her longing to accompany him, but declared that duty imperiously called upon her to accompany the household by train, to see that the journey was made satisfactorily, without any loss of luggage, or extravagance, or indecorum of conduct. Accordingly, on the appointed day, the Lady Gundred Darnley might have been seen amid pyramids of parcels and stacks of trunks, taking her Hegira at the head of an army of retainers. As for Kingston, he had yet another day or so in town, and then must follow his wife down to the West so as not to disappoint those ‘poor Hoope-Arkwright people’ of the glory that had been promised them.