At Loves Cost | Page 2

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 possession of a practically unlimited allowance, and a brazen cheek which can only be described as colossal, the fact that you have not long since gone headlong to the