Humphrey did not want to give Lady Aldeburgh away, but rather her than Susan, and rather Bobby Trench than either of them.
"Susan doesn't care about it," he said. "Lady Aldeburgh—well, you can see what she is, can't you?—nothing like as sensible as her daughter. She'll do what anybody wants her to."
"Oh, then it's Master Trench I'm to thank for making my house a gambling saloon on a Sunday!" exclaimed the Squire. "If he wasn't my guest, I would say something to that young cub that would surprise him. Anyhow, he'll never come into this house again, and I must say, seeing what he is, that I wonder at your asking him at all."
"I'm sorry I did," said Humphrey. "But I hope you won't say anything to him about this. I'll take charge of them and see that they behave themselves."
"Then you'll have your work cut out for you," said the Squire grumpily. "You'd better set about doing it at once. I wish to goodness I'd never consented to people like that coming into the house. I may be old-fashioned—I dare say I am—but I don't understand their ways, and I don't want to."
That had been the end of it as far as he was concerned.
If he could have heard what passed between Lady Aldeburgh and Bobby Trench when deprived of their legitimate amusement—but that thought is too painful. What had happened further on that Sunday evening was that feeling vaguely the need of some sort of comfort in the anxieties that beset him he had suddenly taken it into his head to go to church to the evening service, a thing he hardly ever did, and striding with firm and audible steps into the chancel pew during the saying of the Psalms, he had found, as well as most of the ladies from the house and George Senhouse, assembled there, Humphrey and Susan Clinton sitting together, and had come to the conclusion, during the sermon, that it was creditable on Humphrey's part to have stopped the card-playing on his behalf, instead of joining in it, as might have been expected of him, and that he seemed to be turning over a new leaf, and was probably exercising a good influence over the harmless daughter of a foolish mother.
So he was pleased with Humphrey, but displeased with Lady Aldeburgh, who had shown herself perverse at the dinner-table and in the drawing-room afterwards, had refused to talk more than was necessary, and had gone up to her room on the stroke of ten; and furious with Bobby Trench, who had made no effort to disguise his yawns throughout the evening, and fallen openly asleep in the library after the ladies had retired.
As for Walter, he had talked to him very sensibly later still in the evening about Dick. "Don't do anything," he had said, "till I have seen him again. I don't know what can be done, or if anything can be done. But it's quite certain that if you threaten him you will drive him straight into doing what you don't want him to do." So he had consented to Walter acting as his ambassador, and felt that he could rely on him in that capacity, and even take some comfort in the hope that he might do something to lighten the state of gloom and depression in which most of his waking hours were now passed.
It was with a feeling of relief that he saw the whole party, with the exception of Sir Herbert Birkett, set out later in the evening on their ten-mile drive to Kemsale. It had been his intention to go with them, but the thought that Virginia, with whom he had seen Lord Meadshire colloguing, would almost certainly have received an invitation, and would no doubt eagerly have accepted it, deterred him. When his wife's carriage, containing herself, Lady Birkett, and Lady Aldeburgh, who would far rather have been with the younger members of the party, had driven off, and the omnibus, with the rest of them, had followed it, he breathed a sigh of relief. "To-morrow we shall be able to settle down again, thank God!" he said to himself as the door was shut behind him.