"You know, Aunt, Sir Charles brought Di over to stay with Mabel so that she might see the festivities and incidentally say good-bye to me, so you might turn angel and let Diana dance once with me at the very beginning of the ball. I sha'n't see my little playfellow for ages, you know."
A sound from outside held Lady Elizabeth's attention more intently than Jim's pleading words. He crossed to her in the window-enclosure and laid his hand caressingly on her shoulder.
"The Colonel wired me that we were leaving Paddington at nine to-morrow morning, and India is a long way off, Auntie mine."
"Nonsense," answered Lady Elizabeth, as she rose from the deep window-seat. "You are almost twenty, and Diana is only a babe—isn't she, Henry?" She glanced up and appealed to the young man who rather noisily entered the library.
"Who's a babe? Diana? Why, mater, she's a little witch, and I promised her I'd let her see the illuminations at ten and then old Burrow should carry her off to bed."
Henry Wynnegate, seventh Earl of Kerhill, dropped into a great settle close to the fire. The ball was for the tenantry in celebration of his return, after five years' absence with his regiment. He was a tall, heavy-set young soldier of seven-and-twenty, with the famous Wynnegate beauty, but it was marred by the shifting expression of his rather deep-set eyes and the heavy lines about his mouth. Self was his god: it showed in every expression of his face and in every action of his life.
Jim Wynnegate, his cousin, the son of the younger brother of the late Earl, Henry's father, turned from the window as Henry entered. In the young boy's face—for he seemed younger than his years—one could easily trace the family resemblance; but Jim, with his great, clean spirit shining in his honest gray eyes, invited confidence and won it, from a mongrel dog to a superior officer. He was taller than Henry, and as slim as a young sapling. The delicate, sensitive mouth was balanced by a strong chin.
In the oak-lined room, grown almost black with age, the candle-lights flickering in the heavy brass sconces, stood these three last descendants of a great family. The Earl's brother, Dick Wynnegate, had run away with the daughter of an impecunious colonel. A few years later, while on service in India, he was shot, and the young wife lived only to bring the tiny boy Jim home and to leave him with her husband's brother. Even then the fortunes of the Wynnegates were somewhat impaired, but the old Earl had taken the boy to his heart, and on his death had confided him to his wife to share their fortune with his son Henry. His last words were, "Be good to poor Dick's boy." The estates were entailed, so no provision could be made by him for Jim, but Lady Kerhill, in her cold, just fashion, had tried to make Dick's boy happy.
Deep in his heart, Jim remembered the years that followed; remembered the selfish domination of the elder boy; remembered the blind adoration of his aunt for her son, the bearer of the torch, who was to carry on the golden light of the house of Kerhill. In the Anglo-Saxon idolatry of the Countess of Kerhill for the male of the family, all the old traditions and beliefs were justified. Her boy—-the man-child who was to be the head of the house—was her obsession. The tiny, flower-like girl who came shortly before her husband's death, learned soon to turn to Cousin Jim for comfort when her brother carelessly crushed her little joys, as he selfishly planned and fought for his own gratification.
Instinctively Jim watched his aunt, who, at Henry's word, had started to move towards him.