“These people do not happen to be royal,” said Dr. Paull, as coldly as he ever spoke to his son. “But I am sorry that Jones is getting old and garrulous. I thought he would last my time out.”
“He meant no harm——” began Ralph; but his father gave him a Times leader on the recent death of a celebrated geologist to read, and glanced at the memoir attached to the portrait.
This, after stating that the Princess Andriocchi was the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Saldanhés, who were high in favor at the Court of Spain, enlarged upon the sensation her beauty had created in Paris, how her carriage had been mobbed, how great portrait painters had made interest in influential quarters to have the privilege of taking her portrait, not knowing, until the picture by a celebrated Spanish artist was on the walls of the Salon, that they had been forestalled. After some further complimentary remarks, the article ended with the statement that although the princess was Spanish by birth, she had been educated in England.
“And this is the fulsome adulation with which the world ruins its sweetest women!” thought Hugh, intensely disgusted and annoyed. “What can be done against that? How can anyone or anything make an honest, God-fearing woman out of the object of that sort of stuff?”
He tried to occupy his mind with general subjects until they reached F—— Station, where Mr. and Mrs. Mervyn met them, beaming with smiles.
“Granny!”
“My dearest boy!”
Ralph was rapturously embraced by Mrs. Mervyn, who was stouter and greyer than twenty years before, while Mr. Mervyn, a handsome old man, with hair as white as Hugh’s prematurely blanched locks, shook hands with Dr. Paull, who this year had been absent from the Pinewood for six months.
“You must be glad to get away for a peep at the dear old place,” said Mrs. Mervyn, warmly, as she sat opposite Hugh in the waggonette. “You will find the garden a little neglected, I fear. You see, the men have had no direct orders, and we did not like to interfere.”
To Hugh, the peeps of the grounds through the clumps of pines as they drove along produced an effect of desolation. There was the still, overgrown, neglected look about the place which even the best kept estate will assume after the protracted absence of its owner. They were all to lunch together at the Pinewood. As they neared the house, Hugh’s spirits fell lower and lower.