At Loves Cost | Page 2

a pageant of pleasure to Stafford Orme: no wonder he sang
and smiled upon the way and had no lack of companions.
Even this man beside him, Edmund Howard, whose name was a
by-word for cynicism, who had never, until he had met Stafford Orme,
gone an inch out of his self-contained way to please or benefit a
fellow-man, was the slave of the young fellow's imperious will, and
though he made burlesque complaint of his bondage, did not in his

heart rebel against it.
Stafford laughed shortly as he looked at the rain-swept hills round
which the two good horses were taking the well-appointed phaeton.
"Oh, I knew you would come," he said. "It was just this way. You
know the governor wrote and asked me to come down to this new place
of his at Bryndermere--"
"Pardon me, Stafford; you forget that I have been down South--where I
wish to Heaven I had remained!--and that I only returned yesterday
afternoon, and that I know nothing of these sudden alarums and
excursions of your esteemed parent."
"Ah, no; so you don't!" assented Stafford; "thought I'd told you: shall
have to tell you now; I'll cut it as short as possible." He paused for a
moment and gently drew the lash of the whip over the wet backs of the
two horses who were listening intently to the voice of their beloved
master. "Well, three days ago I got a letter from my father; it was a
long one; I think it's the first long letter I ever received from him. He
informed me that for some time past he has been building a little place
on the east side of Bryndermere Lake, that he thought it would be ready
by the ninth of this month; and would I go down--or is it up?--there and
meet him, as he was coming to England and would go straight there
from Liverpool. Of course there was not time for me to reply, and
equally, of course, I prepared to obey. I meant going straight down to
Bryndermere; and I should have done so, but two days ago I received a
telegram telling me that the place would not be ready, and that he
would not be there until the eleventh, and asking me to fill up the
interval by sending down some horses and carriages. It occurred to me,
with one of those brilliant flashes of genius which you have so often
remarked in me, my dear Howard, that I would drive down, at any rate,
part of the way; so I sent some of the traps direct and got this turn-out
as far as Preston with me. With another of those remarkable flashes of
genius, it also occurred to me that I should be devilish lonely with only
Pottinger here," he jerked his head towards the groom, who sat in damp
and stolid silence behind. "And so I wrote and asked you to come. Kind
of me, wasn't it?"

"Most infernally kind," said Howard, with a sigh of a ton weight. "Had
you any idea that your father was building this little place? By the way,
I can't imagine Sir Stephen building anything that could be described as
'little'.
"You are right," assented Stafford, with a nod. "I heard coming down
that it was a perfect palace of a place, a kind of palace of art and--and
that sort of thing. You know the governor's style?" His brows were
slightly knit for just a second, then he threw, as it were, the frown off,
with a smile. "No, I knew nothing about it; I knew as little about it as I
do of the governor himself and his affairs."
Howard nodded.
"When you come to think of it, Howard, isn't it strange that father and
son should know so little of each other? I have not seen the governor
for I forget how many years. He has been out of England for the last
fourteen or fifteen, with the exception of a few flying visits; and on the
occasion of those visits I was either at school on the Continent or
tramping about with a gun or a rod, and so we never met. I've a kind of
uneasy suspicion that my revered parent had no particular desire to
renew his acquaintance with his dutiful offspring; anyway, if he had, he
would have arranged a meeting. Seems rather peculiar; for in every
other respect his conduct as a parent has been above reproach."
"Those are scarcely the terms by which I should designate a liberality
which can only be described as criminally lavish, and an indifference to
your moral progress which might more properly belong to an
unregenerate Turk than to an English baronet. Considering the
opportunities of evil afforded you by the