not squander the wealth
of her affection. Perhaps her capacity for loving had died with her
husband. She had been proud and fond of him, but she was not proud of
the little boy in velvet knickerbockers, whose good looks were his only
merit, and who was continually being guilty of some new piece of
mischief; laming ponies, smashing orchids, glass, china, and generally
disturbing the perfect order which was Briarwood's first law.

When the boy was old enough to go to Eton, he seemed still more remote
from his mother's love and sympathy. He was passionately fond of field
sports, and those Lady Jane Vawdrey detested. He was backwards in all
his studies, despite the careful coaching he had received from the mild
Anglican curate of Briarwood village. He was intensely pugilistic, and
rarely came home for the holidays without bringing a black eye or a
swollen nose as the result of his latest fight. He spent a good deal of
money, and in a manner that to his mother's calm sense appeared simply
idiotic. His hands were always grubby, his nails wore almost perpetual
mourning, his boots were an outrage upon good taste, and he generally
left a track of muddy foot-marks behind him along the crimson-carpeted
corridors. What could any mother do for such a boy, except tolerate
him? Love was out of the question. How could a delicate, high-bred
woman, soft-handed, velvet robed, care to have such a lad about her? a
boy who smelt of stables and wore hob-nailed boots, whose pockets were
always sticky with toffee, and his handkerchiefs a disgrace to
humanity, who gave his profoundest thoughts to pigeon-fancying, and his
warmest affections to ratting terriers, nay, who was capable of having
a live rat in his pocket at any moment of his life.

But while all these habits made the lad abominable in the eyes of his
mother, the Duke and Duchess of Dovedale admired the young Hercules
with a fond and envious admiration. The Duke would have given coal-pits
and tin-mine, all the disposable property he held, and deemed it but a
small price for such a son. The Duchess thought of her feeble
boy-babies who had been whooping-coughed or scarlet-fevered out of the
world, and sighed, and loved her nephew better than ever his mother had
loved him since his babyhood. When the Dovedales were at their place in
the Forest, Roderick almost lived with them; or, at any rate, divided
his time between Ashbourne Park and the Abbey House, and spent as
little of his life a