‘Only recollect this, sir—I know my station and I know yours, and I will have no nonsense with her.’
‘All right!’ said Herbert shortly, with a laugh, his head too full of other matters to think what all this implied.
He wished to avoid exciting any disturbance, so he told his mother that he should be off again the next day.
‘It is very hard,’ grumbled Mrs. Morton, ‘that you can never be contented to stay with your poor mother! I did hope that with the regatta, and the yachts, and Mr. Brady, you would find amusement enough to give us a little of your company;
but nothing is good enough for you now. Which of your fine friends are you going to?’
Herbert was not superior to an evasion, and said, ‘I’m going up to town first, and shall see Dacre, and I’ll write by and by.’
She resigned herself to the erratic movements of the son, who, being again, in her eyes, heir to the peerage, was to her like a comet in a higher sphere.
CHAPTER XXXVI
IDA’S CONFESSION
The move to Malvern was at last made, and the air seemed at once to invigorate Lord Northmoor, though the journey tried his wife more than she had expected, and she remained in a very drooping state, in spite of her best efforts not to depress him. Nothing seemed to suit her so well as to lie on a couch in the garden of their lodging, with Constance beside her, talking, and sometimes smiling over all her little Mite’s pretty ways; though at other times she did her best to seem to take interest in other matters, and to persuade her husband that his endeavours to give her pleasure or interest were successful, because the exertions he made for her sake were good for him.
He was by this time anxious—since he was by the end of three weeks quite well, and fairly strong—to go down to Westhaven, and learn all he could about the circumstances of the fate of his poor little son; and only delayed till he thought his wife could spare him. Lady Adela urged him at last to go. She thought that Mary lived in a state of