It was quite five minutes before he spoke again, during which time he sat with knitted brows and eyes fixed intently but absently upon me, deep in thought, and thought of which it seemed to me somehow that I must be the subject.
“Where were you born?”
“At the farm, sir—at least, I suppose so.”
It flashed into my mind at that moment that I had never heard the period of my earliest childhood spoken of either by my father or mother. But it was only a passing thought, dismissed almost as soon as conceived. Had we not always lived at the farm? Where else could I have been born?
“Do you know any of your mother’s relations?” Mr. Ravenor asked, taking no notice of the qualifying addition to my previous answer.
I shook my head. I had never seen or heard of any of them, and it was a circumstance upon which I had more than once pondered. But my mother’s reserved demeanour towards me of late years had checked many questions which I might otherwise have felt inclined to ask her. There was a brief silence, during which Mr. Ravenor sat with his face half turned away from me, resting it lightly upon the long, delicate fingers of his left hand.
“You are a little young for college,” he said presently, in a more matter-of-fact tone; “besides which, I doubt whether you are quite advanced enough. I have decided, therefore, to send you for two years to a clergyman in Lincolnshire who receives a few pupils, my own nephew among them. He is a friend of mine, and will give some shape to your studies. There are one or two things which I shall ask you to remember when you get there,” he went on.
“First, that this little arrangement between your mother, yourself, and me remains absolutely a secret among us. Also that you seek, or, at any rate, do not refuse, the friendship of my nephew, Cecil, Lord Silchester. From what I can learn I fear that he is behaving in a most unsatisfactory manner, and, as I know him to be weak-minded and easily led, his behaviour at present and his character in the future are to a great extent dependent upon the influence which his immediate companions may have over him. You understand me?”
I assented silently, for words at that moment were not at my command; my cheeks were flushed, and my heart was beating with pleasure at the confidence in me which Mr. Ravenor’s words implied. That moment was one of the sweetest of my life.
“I do not, of course, wish you to play the spy in any way upon my nephew,” Mr. Ravenor continued, “but I shall expect you to tell me the unbiassed truth should I at any time ask you any questions concerning him; and if you think, after you have been there some time and have had an opportunity of judging, that he would be likely to do better elsewhere, under stricter discipline than at Dr. Randall’s, I shall expect you to tell me so. In plain words, Philip Morton, I ask you to take an interest in and look after my nephew.”