"What an envious brute I am!" he said to himself. "I dare say, when Wornock comes home, I shall find him a decent fellow, and we shall get to be good friends. If we do, I'll tell him how I was gnawed with envy of his better fortune before ever I saw his face."
CHAPTER II.
ALLAN CAREW'S PEOPLE.
Allan Carew spent the best part of the following day at Beechhurst, better pleased with his inheritance than he would confess even to himself. The Admiral's Chinese experiences had not been without tangible result. The hall was decorated with curios whose value their present possessor could only guess, and if the greater part of the house was prim and commonplace, there was one room which was both handsome and original—this was the smoking-room and library, a spacious apartment which the Admiral had added to the original structure, and which was built on the model of a Mandarin's reception-room. Yes, on the whole, Allan was inclined to think his lot had fallen on a pleasant heritage. He went up to town in good spirits; spent ten days in looking at hunting studs at Tattersall's, and made his modest selection with care and prudence, content to start his stable with four good hunters, a dog-cart horse, a pony to fetch and carry, two grooms and a stable-help.
The all-important business of the stable concluded, he went back to Suffolk to spend Easter in the bosom of his family, and to tell his father what he had done. There was perfect harmony of feeling, and frankest confidence between father and son, and the son's regard for the father was all the stronger because, under that quiet and somewhat languid bearing of the Squire of Fendyke, Allan suspected hidden depths. Of the history of his father's youth, or the history of his father's heart, the son knew nothing; yet, fondly as he loved his mother, the excellent and popular Lady Emily, he had a shrewd suspicion that she was not the kind of woman to have won his father's heart in the days when love means romance rather than reason. That she possessed her husband's warm affection now, he, the son, was fully assured; but he was equally assured that the alliance had been passionless, a union of two honourable minds, rather than of two loving hearts.
There was that in his father's manner of life which to Allan's mind told of a youth overshadowed by some unhappy experience; and a word dropped now and then, in the father's talk of his son's prospects and hopes, a hint, a sigh, had suggested an unfortunate love-affair.
His mother was more communicative, and had told her son frankly that she was not his father's first love.
"You remember your grandmother, Allan?" she said.
Yes, Allan remembered her distinctly—an elderly woman dressed in some rich silken fabric, always black, with a silver chatelaine at her side, on which there hung a curious old enamelled watch that he loved to look at. A tall slender figure, a thin aquiline countenance, with silvery hair arrayed in feathery curls under a honiton cap. She had been always kind to him; but no kindness could dispel the awe which she inspired.
"I used to dream of her," he said. "Had she a frightening voice, do you think? She was mixed up in most of my childish nightmares."