They wandered on along a path that skirted the wood, talking anxiously about the matter which had in truth brought them to Castle Luton. In spite of the comparative gentleness of English political relations, neither Maxwell nor Marcella, perhaps, would willingly have become Charlotte Allison's guests at a moment when her house was actually the headquarters of a violent and effective opposition to Maxwell's policy, when moreover the leader of that opposition was likely to be of the party. But about a fortnight before Whitsuntide some tales of young Ancoats had suddenly reached Maxwell's ears, with such effect that on his next meeting with Ancoats's mother he practically invited himself and Marcella—greatly to Mrs. Allison's surprise—to Castle Luton for Whitsuntide.
For the boy had been Maxwell's ward, and Henry Allison had been the intimate friend and comrade of Maxwell's father. And Maxwell's feeling for his father, and for his father's friends, was of such a kind that his guardian's duties had gone deep with him. He had done his best for the boy, and since Ancoats had reached his majority his ex-guardian had still kept him anxiously in mind.
Of late indeed Ancoats had troubled himself very little about his guardian, or his guardian's anxieties. He seemed to have been devoting a large share of his mind to the avoidance of his mother's old friends; and the Maxwells, for months, in spite of many efforts on their part, had seen little or nothing of him. Maxwell for various reasons had begun to suspect a number of uncomfortable things with regard to the young fellow's friends and pleasures. Yet nothing could be taken hold of till this sudden emergence of a particular group of stories, coupling Ancoats's name with that of a notorious little actress whose adventures had already provided a certain class of newspaper with abundant copy.
Then Maxwell, who cared personally very little for the red-haired youth himself, took alarm for the mother's sake. For in the case of Mrs. Allison a scandal of the kind suggested meant a tragedy. Her passion for her son was almost a tragedy already, so closely mingled in it were the feelings of the mother and those of the Christian, to whom "vice" is not an amusement, but an agony.
* * * * *
Yet, as Marcella said and felt, it was a hard fate that had forced Maxwell to concern himself with Ancoats's love-affairs at this particular moment.
"Don't think of it," she said at last, urgently, as they walked along.
"It is too bad; as if there were not enough!"
Maxwell stood still, with a little smile, and put his arm round her shoulders.
"Dear, I shall soon have time enough, probably, to think about Ancoats's affairs or anything else. Do you know that I was planning this morning what we would do when we go out? Shall we slip over to the Australian colonies in the autumn? I would give a good deal to see them for myself."
She gave a low cry of pain.