dear brother and his fiancée were to believe her actuated by the purest sense of the duty and anxiety she owed to them and her dear children, the orphans of his dear deceased brother. Now that she had once expressed herself, she trusted to her dear Frank’s affectionate nature to bury all in oblivion, and to believe that she should be ready to welcome her new sister-in-law with the warmest affection. Therewith followed a request for five pounds, to pay for her mourning and darling Ida’s, which they had felt due to him!
Lord Northmoor did not quite see how it was due to him, nor did he intend to give whatever his dear sister-in-law might demand, but she had made him so angry that he felt that he must prove his forgiveness to himself. Mary had not thought it needful to describe the force of the attack upon herself, or perhaps his pardon might not have gone so far. He sent the note, and added that as he was wanted at Northmoor for a day or two, he would take his nephew Herbert with him.
This was something like, as Mrs. Morton said, a kind of tangible acknowledgment of their relationship and of Herbert as his heir, and it was a magnificent thing to tell all her acquaintances that her son was gone to the family seat with his uncle, Lord Northmoor. She would fain have obtained for him some instructions in the manners of the upper ten thousand from Mr. Rollstone, but Herbert entirely repudiated listening to that old fogey, observing that after all it was only old Frank, and he wasn’t going to bother himself for the like of him.
The uncle was fond of his brother’s boy, and had devised this plan partly for the sake of the pleasure it would give, and partly because it was impossible to form any judgment of his character while with the mother. He was a fine, well-grown, manly boy, and when seen among his companions, had an indefinable air of good blood about him. He had hitherto been at a good day-school which prepared boys for the merchant service, and his tastes were so much in the direction of the sea, that it was much to be regretted that at fourteen and a half it was useless to think of preparation for a naval cadetship. He was sent up by train to join his uncle at Hurminster, and the first question after the greeting was, ‘I say, uncle, shan’t you have a yacht?’
‘I could not afford it, if I wished it,’ was the answer, while Punch was handed over to him, and Lord Northmoor applied himself to a long blue letter.
‘Landlubber!’ sighed Herbert to himself, with true marine contempt for a man who had sat on an office-stool all his life. ‘He doesn’t look a bit more of a swell than he used to. It is well there’s some one with some pluck in the family.’
CHAPTER IX
THE HEIR-PRESUMPTUOUS
Herbert began to be impressed when, on the train arriving at a little country station, a servant in mourning, with finger to his hat, inquired after his Lordship’s luggage, and another was seen presiding over a coroneted brougham.
‘I say,’ he breathed forth, when they were shut in, ‘is this yours?’
‘It is Miss Morton’s, I believe, at present. I am to arrange whether to keep it or not.’