stem. He had slunk away from Raynham in the very
crisis of the Magnetic Age, and this young woman of the parish (as Benson
had termed sweet Lucy in his letter) was the consequence.

Yes! pride and sensitiveness were his chief foes, and he would trample on
them. To begin, he embraced his son: hard upon an Englishman at any
time--doubly so to one so shamefaced at emotion in cool blood, as it
were. It gave him a strange pleasure, nevertheless. And the youth seemed
to answer to it; he was excited. Was his love, then, beginning to
correspond with his father's as in those intimate days before the
Blossoming Season?

But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried out, "My
dear, dear father! You are safe! I feared--You are better, sir? Thank
God!" Sir Austin stood away from him.

"Safe?" he said. "What has alarmed you?"

Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and seized his hand
and kissed it.

Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain.

"Those doctors are such fools!" Richard broke out. "I was sure they were
wrong. They don't know headache from apoplexy. It's worth the ride, sir,
to see you. You left Raynham so suddenly.--But you are well! It was not
an attack of real apoplexy?"

His father's brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not. Richard
pursued:

"If you were ill, I couldn't come too soon, though, if coroners' inquests
sat on horses, those doctors would be found guilty of mare-slaughter.
Cassandra'll be knocked up. I was too early for the train at Bellingham,
and I wouldn't wait. She did the distance in four hours and
three-quarters. Pretty good, sir, wasn't it?"

"It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope," said the baronet, not so
well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that had brought
the youth to him in such haste.

"I'm ready," replied Richard. "I shall be in time to return by the last
train to-night. I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a rest."

His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling with
an eagerness that might pass for appetite.

"All well at Raynham?" said the baronet.

"Quite, sir."

"Nothing new?"

"Nothing, sir."

"The same as when I left?"

"No change whatever!"

"I shall be glad to get back to the old place," said the baronet. "My
stay in town has certainly been profitable. I have made some pleasant
acquaintances who may probably favour us with a visit there in the late
autumn--people you