It is lamentable to have to record the fact, but her husband’s resentment against his son was not so displeasing to Mrs Dorrien as her conscience told her should have been the case. For even as all his affection is buried in the grave of his first-born, so does she dote upon her youngest. For the exiled Roland she has little love. He is too strong of will for her; and no more than over his father has she ever been able to exercise over him that power she delights in. But to see her idolised Hubert installed at Cranston as its heir—even though in his brother’s place—is a tempting picture to the eyes of this woman, whose one weakness is love of her idol. To do her justice, conscience prevails, and she is about to urge even more in defence of the absent one, when a step is heard on the stairs, and the General exclaims:
“Hush. No more now. I hear Nellie coming down. Oblige me by not mentioning this”—tapping the letter—“to her, or to anyone, at present.”
“Good-morning, papa,” cries a fresh, cheerful voice, and the old man’s face softens perceptibly beneath his daughter’s kiss. She is a tall, largely-made girl, but not in the least gawky or ungraceful; and although her features are too irregular for conventional beauty, yet a profusion of soft brown hair, blue eyes and the warm flush tingeing a clear skin, together with a bright, taking expression when she smiles, combine to render Nellie Dorrien a pretty girl—some think, a very pretty girl.
“You’re late, child,” says the General, not unkindly. “Better sit down and get your breakfast. I must go and attend to my correspondence”—and gathering up his letters he goes out.
“I do think, Nellie,” began her mother, as soon as they were left alone, “I do think you might take the trouble to be down a little sooner. Your papa is so vexed when everybody is late, and now you are both late, and he’ll be doubly so.”
“But he was not a bit cross, mamma, at least not with me.”
“Not with you! No, perhaps not. But Hubert isn’t down yet, and it’ll all fall upon him. However, as you are safe, it doesn’t matter about poor Hubert,” added Mrs Dorrien acidly.
“Really, mamma, I don’t think it’s quite fair to saddle me with Hubert’s derelictions. Surely he is old enough to take care of himself,” gently objected the girl.
“Of course. Selfishness is the order of the day in this house, I ought to have remembered that.”
Nellie gave a little shrug of her shoulders, but made no reply. She was far from being a selfish girl, but she could not see why everything and everybody should be made to give way to Hubert and his convenience, as it had to do wherever her mother’s authority or influence reached. For Mrs Dorrien chose to fancy her youngest son an invalid, on the strength of which that interesting youth at the age of twenty-two would have taken first prize at an unlicked cub show—supposing such an institution to exist. Nellie herself knew this reputed debility to be sheer fudge—which knowledge she unconsciously shared with certain convivial and raffish spirits who were wont to meet more nights a week than was good for them at the “Cock and Bull and Twisted Cable” in Wandsborough, and these latter could have accounted for the poor boy’s chronic seediness more to his mother’s enlightenment than satisfaction.