“Pooh, pooh, nonsense! What would she have worried you about it for? All young people have pains in their sides,” returned the baronet oracularly. “She’s not done growing yet. Well, then, it’s settled that I carry her off on Monday. We will start early, so as to be there to receive Mrs. de Winton, who arrives at Grosvenor Square by the late afternoon train.”
“But there is one thing you must promise me,” said Raymond, going up to him and laying a hand impressively on his arm; “you will go to no unnecessary expense. You must give me your word for that.”
“There you are, as usual, harping on the old string,” laughed the baronet, with a touch of impatience. “What expense do you expect me to go to? The house is there, and the servants are there and whether I’m there or not the expenses go on. You don’t suppose Franceline will add very heavily to them, or Mrs. de Winton either?”
“But you talked about taking her to the operas, and so on, and I am sure she would not care for amusements of that sort; they would be too exciting for her. The change of scene and the sights of the city will be quite enough.”
“Make your mind easy about all that. Mrs. de Winton will take care the child doesn’t overdo herself. She’s a very sensible woman, and not at all fond of excitement.”
As the baronet pronounced Mrs. de Winton’s name, it occurred to him for the first time to wonder if it suggested nothing to Raymond, and whether Clide’s assiduity at The Lilies, and prolonged stay at Dullerton after his announcement that he was only to remain three days, awoke no suspicion in his mind. The thing would have been impossible in the case of any other father; but Raymond was so absorbed in his studies, in hunting out and analyzing the Causes of the Revolution, the proposed title of the work that was to be Franceline’s dot, and so altogether unlearned in the common machinery of life, that he was capable of seeing the house on fire, and not suspecting it concerned him until it singed his pen. He knew that Clide’s meeting with him had been a turning-point in the young man’s life; that it was Raymond’s advice and influence that determined him to return to Glanworth, and enter on his duties there with a vigorous desire to fulfil them at the sacrifice of his own plans and inclinations. He was already acting the part of mentor to Clide, who carried him his agent’s letters to read, and consulted him about the various philanthropic schemes he had in his head for the improvement of the people on his estate—notably the repression of drunkenness, which Raymond impressed on him must be the keystone of all possible improvement among the humbler classes in England. Was it possible that this demeanor and the son-like tone of respect which Clide had adopted toward him suggested no ulterior motive on Clide’s part, or awoke no parental fear or suspicion in Raymond? Sir Simon was turning this problem up and down in his mind, and debating how far it might be advisable to sound his friend, when Raymond said abruptly:
“Mr. de Winton is not going with you, of course?”
“No; he is to run down to his own place while we are away. I expect him back when we return.”
Their eyes met. Sir Simon smiled a quizzical, complaisant smile, but it died out quickly when he saw the alarmed expression in Raymond’s face.
“The idea never struck me before,” he exclaimed. “How should it? There was nothing to suggest it; the disparity is too great.”