“His lordship’s brother.”
“Was that he who went up towards the Point just now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Is he going to stop here long, do you know?”
“I don’t think he knows himself, ma’am. It’ll depend upon the weather most likely. If we get a fair wind we may be off to the Lizard at an hour’s notice, and away up north to the Hebrides.”
“Doesn’t that seem inconsistent?” exclaimed Allegra, as they walked homewards. “What is the good of coming to Cornwall if he wants to go to the Hebrides? It must be very much out of his way.”
“He may want to see his old home, perhaps. He was born at the Mount, you know.”
“Indeed! I don’t know anything about him, but I want to know ever so much. I call it an interesting face.”
Allegra was full of animation during the homeward walk. A stranger of any kind must needs be a God-send, as affording a subject for conversation; but such a stranger as Lostwithiel’s brother afforded a theme of strongest interest. She had heard so much about Lord Lostwithiel and all his works and ways—the pity of it that he did not marry; the still greater pity that he did not live at the Mount, and give shooting parties and spend money in the neighbourhood. She had heard in a less exalted key of his lordship’s younger brother, who had fought under Beresford in Egypt, and who had only lately left the navy. What more natural than that such a man should sail his brother’s yacht?
Captain Hulbert was still unmarried; but no one talked about the pity of that. People took a severely sensible view of his case, and were unanimous in the opinion that he could not afford to marry, and that any inspiration in that line would be criminal on his part. There was an idea at Trelasco that the younger sons of peers of moderate fortune have been specially designed by Providence to keep up the race of confirmed bachelors. There must be bachelors; the world cannot get on without them; society requires them as a distinct element in social existence; and it would ill become the offshoots of the peerage to shrink from fulfilling their destiny.