think I have said that his father was an Irish landlord, who was shot
at his own hall-door in his children's infancy. Lady Diana brought
them back to her old neighbourhood, and there reigned over one of her
brother's villages, with the greatest respect and admiration from all,
and viewed as a pattern matron, widow, and parent. My mother was, I
fancy, a little bit afraid of her, and never entirely at ease with her.
I know I was not, but she was so "particular" about her children, that
it was a great distinction to be allowed to be intimate with them, and
my mother was proud of my being their licensed playfellow, when
Horsmans and Stympsons were held aloof. But even in those days, when I
heard the little Tracys spoken of as pattern children, I used to have
an odd feeling of what it was to be behind the scenes, and know how
much of their fame rested on Di. I gloried in the knowledge how much
more charming the other two were than anyone guessed, who thought them
models of propriety.

In truth, Dermot did not keep that reputation much longer than his
petticoats. Ere long he was a pickle of the first order, equalling the
sublime naughtiness of Holiday House, and was continually being sent
home by private tutors, who could not manage him. All the time I had a
secret conviction that, if he had been my own mother's son, she could
have managed him, and he would never have even wished to do what she
disapproved; but Lady Diana had no sympathy or warmth in her, and while
she loved her children she fretted them, and never thawed nor unbent;
and when she called in her brother's support, Dermot's nerves were
driven frantic by the long harangues, and his relief was in antics
which of course redoubled his offence. After he had put crackers into
his uncle's boots, peppered the coachman's wig, inserted a live toad in
the centre of a fortification of clear jelly at a great luncheon, and
had one Christmas painted the two stone wild boars that guard the iron
gates of Erymanth Castle into startling resemblance of the porkers as
displayed in butchers' shops, with a little tin pail at the snout of
each, labelling each sevenpence-ha'penny per pound, his uncle had
little more hope of him.

Dreading his father's fate for him, Lady Diana put him into the Guards,
to prevent him from living in Ireland, and there he fell into all the
usual temptations of his kind, so that everybody came to look on him as
a black sheep, and all the time I knew