disguise, is often very useful.

Chapter XLI

Going To Norway

On the next day Harry was not better, but the doctor said that there was
no cause for alarm. He was suffering from a low fever, and his sister
had better be kept out of his room. He would not sleep, and was
restless, and it might be some time before he could return to London.

Early in the day the rector came into his son's bedroom, and told him
and his mother, who was there, the news which he had just heard from the
great house. "Hugh has come home," he said, "and is going out yachting
for the rest of the Summer. They are going to Norway in Jack Stuart's
yacht. Archie is going with them." Now Archie was known to be a great
man in a yacht, cognizant of ropes, well up in booms and spars, very
intimate with bolts, and one to whose hands a tiller came as naturally
as did the saddle of a steeple-chase horse to the legs of his friend
Doodles. "They are going to fish," said the rector.

"But Jack Stuart's yacht is only a river boat--or just big enough for
Cowes harbor, but nothing more," said Harry, roused in his bed to some
excitement by the news.

"I know nothing about Jack Stuart or his boat either," said the rector;
"but that's what they told me. He's down here, at any rate, for I saw
the servant that came with him."

"What a shame it is," said Mrs. Clavering--"a scandalous shame."

"You mean his going away?" said the rector.

"Of course I do; his leaving her here by herself; all alone. He can have
no heart; after losing her child and suffering as she has done. It makes
me ashamed of my own name."

"You can't alter him, my dear. He has his good qualities and his
bad--and the bad ones are by far the more conspicuous."

"I don't know any good qualities he has."

"He does not get into debt. He will not destroy the property. He will
leave the family after him as well off as it was before him--and though
he is a hard man, he does nothing actively cruel. Think of Lord Ongar,
and then you'll remember that there are worse men than Hugh. Not that I
like him. I am never comfortable for a moment in his presence. I always
feel that he wants to quarrel with me, and that I almost want to quarrel
with him."

"I detest him," said Harry, from beneath the bedclothes.

"You won't be troubled with him any more this Summer, for he means to be
off in less than a week."

"And what is she to do?" asked Mrs. Clavering.

"Live here as she has done ever sin