's part, it was impossible to
withhold--as they drove back to Northmoor--the proposal to take her with
them, and the effect was magical. Constance opened her eyes, bounded up,
as if she were going to fly out of the carriage, and then launched
herself, first on her uncle, then on her aunt, for an ecstatic kiss.

'Take care, take care, we shall have the servants thinking you a little
lunatic!'

'I am almost! Oh, I am so glad! To be with you and Aunt Mary all the
holidays! That would be enough! But to go and see all the places,' she
added, somehow perceiving that the desire to escape from home was, at
least ought not to be approved of, and yet there was some exultation,
when she hazarded a supposition that there was no time to go home.

CHAPTER XVIII
DESDICHADO

Home--that is to say, Westhaven--was in some commotion when Herbert came
back and grimly growled out his intelligence as to his own personal
affairs. Mrs. Morton had been already apprized, in one of Lord
Northmoor's well-considered letters, of his intentions of removing his
nephew to a tutor more calculated to prepare for the army, and she had
accepted this as promotion such as was his due. However, when the pride
of her heart, the tall gentlemanly son, made his appearance in a savage
mood, her feelings were all on the other side, and those of Ida
exaggerated hers.

'So I'm to go to some disgusting hole where they grind the fellows no
end,' was Herbert's account of the matter.

'But surely with your connection there's no need for grinding?' said his
mother.

Herbert laughed, 'Much you know about it! Nobody cares a rap for
connections nowadays, even if old Frank were a connection to do a man any
good.'

'But you'll not go and study hard and hurt yourself, my dear,' said his
mother, though Herbert's looks by no means suggested any such danger,
while Ida added, 'It is not as if he had nothing else to look to, you
know. He can't keep you out of the peerage.'

'Can't he then? Why, he can and will too, for thirty or forty years more
at least.'

'I thought his health was failing,' said Ida, putting into words a hope
her mother had a little too much sense of propriety to utter.

'Bosh, it's only neuralgia, just because he is such a stick he can't take
things easy, and lark about and do every one's work--he hasn't the least
notion what a gentleman ought to do.'

'It is bred in the bone,' said his mother; 'he always was a shabby poor
creatu