Appleby laughed. “I never liked it in the least, but Godfrey Palliser gave me my education, which was rather more than anybody could have expected of him, and I had the sense to see that if I was ever able to practise for myself the business he could influence would be a good thing for me. My worthy employer, however, evidently intends holding on forever, and the sordid, monotonous drudgery has been getting insupportable lately. You may be able to understand that, though you haven’t spent six years in a country solicitor’s office.”
“No,” said Palliser sympathetically. “I never go into such places except when I want money, as I frequently do. Still, is there anything else open to you?”
Appleby straightened his shoulders with a little resolute gesture, and—for they were heading west—pointed vaguely towards the pale evening star.
“There are still lands out there where they want men who can ride and shoot, and take their chances as they come; while if I was born to be anything in particular it was either a jockey or a soldier.”
Palliser nodded. “Yes,” he said, “you got it from both sides, and it was rather a grim joke to make you a solicitor. Still, it’s a risky thing to throw one’s living over, and I have a fancy that my uncle likes you. You are a connection, anyway, and one never knows what may happen.”
“Godfrey Palliser has done all he means to do for me, and even if there were nobody else, your children would have a prior claim, Tony.”
Palliser looked up sharply, and though the light was very dim there was something in his face that once more puzzled his companion. “I think that is a little personal—and I wouldn’t make too sure,” he said.
They said nothing further, but tramped on in the growing darkness, past farm steadings where the sleek cattle flocked about the byres, into the little village where the smell of wood smoke was in the frosty air, through the silent churchyard where generations of the Pallisers lay, and up the beech avenue that led to Northrop Hall. It would, as Appleby had said, all be his comrade’s some day. They parted at the head of the great stairway where the long corridors branched off, and Appleby looked at Palliser steadily as he said—
“One could fancy there was something on your mind tonight, Tony.”
Palliser did not answer, and Appleby went to his room to dress for dinner, which was a somewhat unusual proceeding for him. Nothing of moment occurred during the meal, and it was nobody’s fault that he felt not quite at home, as he had done at other functions of the kind. The gayeties of the Metropolis were unknown, except by hearsay, to him, and it was but once a year he met Tony’s friends at Northrop Hall. It was, however, not quite by coincidence, as he at first fancied, that he afterwards found Miss Violet Wayne, Tony’s fiancée, sitting a little apart from the rest in the drawing-room. He did not think that either of them suggested it, but presently she was walking by his side in the conservatory, and when they passed a seat almost hidden under the fronds of a tree fern she sat down in it. The place was dimly lighted, but they could see each other, and Appleby had realized already that Violet Wayne was distinctly good to look upon.