Derval felt a sense of mortification and disappointment. Of all the sudden and wonderful changes around him, he, the wandering sailor, had been kept in utter ignorance! Why was this? As a surprise for him, perhaps, hope suggested.
He found his father grayer, but less lined in visage than he could remember him, for prosperity had smoothed out many a line that Mary had seen growing, to her sorrow. Derval thought his manner nervous, and that he welcomed him, perhaps with affection, but certainly with outward constraint, especially when under the cold and observant eyes of Mrs. Hampton; and when the latter put her large, if white and shapely, hand into that of Derval, there flashed back upon his memory that which he had long forgotten—how viciously she flogged him in the stable with her riding-switch for poodling the cat.
She seemed quite unchanged since then, as young and handsome as ever, for no thought, care, or consideration would ever write a line on her smooth forehead and certainly brilliant face.
"This is your younger brother, Derval," said his father, as Rookleigh came to take his place at the late dinner table. He had his mother's expression of face; her light hazel eyes, only a little more green in tint and shifty in expression, with short white lashes. Derval went to him cordially, though he was no longer like the sleeping baby over whom he had wept on the morning he left home, but a big hulking boy of eleven years old.
Rook, as they named him, eyed his elder brother sullenly, distrustfully, and even malevolently, for already had his mother contrived to implant in his dawning mind, that this tall sailor was a species of natural enemy; but his face lighted up and his manner softened, when this enemy put a handful of silver in his hand, and produced the model junk, some packets of sweetmeats, a jack-knife, shells, and many knick-knacks, brought specially for him from far beyond the sea; and eventually Master Rook, who coveted everything that Derval had to give, contrived to "screw" loose change out of him on every available occasion.
Greville Hampton listened with a curiously mingled expression in his face—disdain of, and indignation at, Lord Oakhampton, when Derval related the episode at Bermuda; and then something of real gratification stole into his features on thinking that the peer's daughter should owe her life and existence to the skill and prowess of his son! While, to anything in which Derval shone with credit, Mrs. Hampton listened coldly, with disdain nearly expressed in her light-coloured eyes, and had no word of womanly or well-bred approbation for the feat he had performed, and of which the only trophy he chose to show, was the signet ring of Lord Oakhampton, with the three choughs under a coronet, at which Greville gave an angry grimace, and sat slowly stroking a huge beard he had cultivated since Derval last saw him.
"And so you like Captain Talbot and your ship, my boy?" said he, when Mrs. Hampton and her peculiar care had betaken them to the drawing-room, and to change the subject of the astounding alterations at Finglecombe, on which Derval had naturally been expatiating.
"Like the Captain? He is a genuine brick!" said Derval; "and as for our ship, no better sails the sea!"
"Fill your glass, Derval—that Burgundy is better than any we used to have long ago."
"Thanks, Papa—'Governor,' I suppose I should call you in the parlance of the present day—even Rook, I perceive, has adopted it."