or four years they had
expressed a polite wish that she should pay them a visit; they had
probably not been unduly depressed by the fact that her aunt's failing
health had prevented her from accepting their invitation. The note of
condolence that had arrived on the occasion of her aunt's death had
included a vague hope that Alethia would find time in the near future to
spend a few days with her cousins, and after much deliberation and many
hesitations she had written to propose herself as a guest for a definite
date some week ahead. The family, she reflected with relief, was not a
large one; the two daughters were married and away, there was only old
Mrs. Bludward and her son Robert at home. Mrs. Bludward was something of
an invalid, and Robert was a young man who had been at Oxford and was
going into Parliament. Further than that Alethia's information did not
go; her imagination, founded on her extensive knowledge of the people one
met in novels, had to supply the gaps. The mother was not difficult to
place; she would either be an ultra-amiable old lady, bearing her feeble
health with uncomplaining fortitude, and having a kind word for the
gardener's boy and a sunny smile for the chance visitor, or else she
would be cold and peevish, with eyes that pierced you like a gimlet, and
a unreasoning idolatry of her son. Alethia's imagination rather inclined
her to the latter view. Robert was more of a problem. There were three
dominant types of manhood to be taken into consideration in working out
his classification; there was Hugo, who was strong, good, and beautiful,
a rare type and not very often met with; there was Sir Jasper, who was
utterly vile and absolutely unscrupulous, and there was Nevil, who was
not really bad at heart, but had a weak mouth and usually required the
life-work of two good women to keep him from ultimate disaster. It was
probable, Alethia considered, that Robert came into the last category, in
which case she was certain to enjoy the companionship of one or two
excellent women, and might possibly catch glimpses of undesirable
adventuresses or come face to face with reckless admiration-seeking
married women. It was altogether an exciting prospect, this sudden
venture into an unexplored world of unknown human beings, and Alethia
rather wished that she could have taken the vicar with her; she was not,
however, rich or important enough to travel with a chaplain, as the
Marquis of Moystoncleugh a