Gideon’s lips curled. “Would you, sir? Then, by God, I will tell you! My poor little cousin is beset by persons who wish him nothing but good and since he has by far too sweet a disposition to send you, and Scriven, and Nettlebed, and Chigwell, and—but I forget the names of the rest of his retinue!—to the devil, he has been forced to fly from you all. I do not know where he has gone, or how long he means to stay away, or what purpose he has in mind!”
“Are you mad?” demanded his lordship, staring at him. “I have cared as much for Gilly as if he had been my own son !”
“More, sir, more!”
Lord Lionel gave a gasp. “Good God, boy, are you jealous of Gilly?”
Gideon laughed. “Devil a bit, sir! I thank God your affection for me never led you into shielding me from every wind that blew, or hedging me about with tutors, valets, stewards, and doctors, who would not let me set one foot in front of the other without begging me to take heed I did not step into a puddle!”
There was a moment’s silence. Lord Lionel said, almost pleadingly: “He was left to my care, and he was the sickliest child!”
“Oh, content you, sir, no one blames you for your anxiety when he was a child! But it is time to be done with dry-nursing him, and has been so several years! You will not let him be a man: you treat him still as though he were a schoolboy.”
“It is not true!” Lord Lionel said. “I have been for ever telling him it is time that he asserted himself!”
Gideon grinned. “Ay, so you have, and what have you said when he has made an attempt to do so? You desired him to learn to manage his estates, but when he tried so to do did not you and Scriven tell him that his notions were absurd, and that he must be guided by older and wiser heads?”
Lord Lionel swallowed, and said quite mildly: “Naturally Scriven and I—know better than he can—But this is nonsense, after all! You have said as much to me before, and I told you then—”