CHAPTER XVIII
DESDICHADO
Home—that is to say, Westhaven—was in some commotion when Herbert came back and grimly growled out his intelligence as to his own personal affairs. Mrs. Morton had been already apprized, in one of Lord Northmoor’s well-considered letters, of his intentions of removing his nephew to a tutor more calculated to prepare for the army, and she had accepted this as promotion such as was his due. However, when the pride of her heart, the tall gentlemanly son, made his appearance in a savage mood, her feelings were all on the other side, and those of Ida exaggerated hers.
‘So I’m to go to some disgusting hole where they grind the fellows no end,’ was Herbert’s account of the matter.
‘But surely with your connection there’s no need for grinding?’ said his mother.
Herbert laughed, ‘Much you know about it! Nobody cares a rap for connections nowadays, even if old Frank were a connection to do a man any good.’
‘But you’ll not go and study hard and hurt
yourself, my dear,’ said his mother, though Herbert’s looks by no means suggested any such danger, while Ida added, ‘It is not as if he had nothing else to look to, you know. He can’t keep you out of the peerage.’
‘Can’t he then? Why, he can and will too, for thirty or forty years more at least.’
‘I thought his health was failing,’ said Ida, putting into words a hope her mother had a little too much sense of propriety to utter.
‘Bosh, it’s only neuralgia, just because he is such a stick he can’t take things easy, and lark about and do every one’s work—he hasn’t the least notion what a gentleman ought to do.’