By that time Rookleigh, strangely precocious, had become—in his sixteenth year—almost a man ere boyhood was past, and during that part of his career, he showed indeed how "the child is the father of the man." Greedy, avaricious, like Mr. Ralph Nickleby (in his youth) he was wont to lend to his companions and schoolfellows halfpence to be repaid by pence, and so forth; and his disposition was further largely leavened with cruelty, which seemed born in him, and bade defiance to all remonstrance. Servants, horses, dogs, and even insects felt its virulence, and when Mr. Asperges Laud spoke reprehensively on the subject, his mother would merely urge that "he was just like other boys," and that all boys are cruel. And already in his sixteenth year, by the influence of companions, though selfish and avaricious to a degree, he, through the medium of billiards, cards, and a betting-book, was utterly wasting the time during which he was waiting for the rent-roll which his mother assured him must one day be his. He was tall, well-made and well-featured, for both his parents were handsome, but the expression of his face, particularly of his shifty green eyes—for they were less golden-hazel in tint than those of his mother—proved unpleasant to all who knew him, and indicated a great latent spirit of evil and malevolence.
In the succession of his tutors, in the society with which he mingled, and in all his surroundings, Rookleigh Hampton had a thousand advantages that the unfortunate Derval had never known, yet with them all he did not eventually make a particular figure amid the circle in which he moved.
Though lavish enough in his expenditure upon himself, and even on those who flattered him, ministered unto him, and made life lively and pleasant by pandering to his weaknesses, the leading features of his character were gross selfishness and avarice or acquisitiveness, all of which he seemed to have inherited from his mother, or through the force of his father's latter thoughts, and were thus, to the manner, born in him.
As when poor Derval sailed on his fatal voyage, Greville Hampton might be found daily in his luxurious library, settling mortgages, signing contracts, adjusting ground-rents, buying up land and old manor-houses to remodel or remove for new ones—up to the eyes among deeds and papers, with old Mr. Stephen De Murrer, the family solicitor, a denizen of Gray's Inn, who about this time began to exert himself anew in the peerage claim of his lucrative employer, and eventually visited Lord Oakhampton, at his house in Tyburnia, on the subject.
Proud and haughty by nature, though a scrupulously well-bred and most aristocratic-like man, his lordship could be very cold and repellent to those he disliked; thus his reception of the stout and deliberate old lawyer, when the latter was ushered into the stately drawing-room overlooking the park, was neither soothing nor encouraging.
"You are a bold fellow, Mr.—oh—Mr.——"
"De Murrer," said the lawyer, bowing.
"Yes—a bold fellow, sir, to come to me personally on this subject, of which I admit having heard before—a claim to my hereditary peerage by this whilom spendthrift—obscure beggar, and latterly successful speculative builder! Absurd, sir! The matter has no face upon it—won't hold water," continued Lord Oakhampton, scornfully; "and anyway, I beg to refer you to my solicitors at Gray's Inn."
"If, my Lord—if the assumption that your great ancestor was summoned by mistake to the House of Peers, in the reign of Queen Anne, is proved—and it is also proved that the real heir was then in existence—the heir from whom my client is descended—what then, my Lord?"
Mortification, exasperation, and pride made the haughty heart of Lord Oakhampton thrill painfully, and he listened to this, and much more that the little lawyer had to advance, as one in a dream. The flies buzzed about the flowers in a magnificent jardiniere; a French clock ticked monotonously on the mantelpiece; and the busy life of London outside, went on as a ceaseless stream; but he felt as if all this evil were about to happen, not to himself, but to someone else, in the confusion and irritation of his mind.