Of the three that walked together that night, she was the merriest as they went along the quiet road. And such was the foundation for the report that Richard was seen rollicking with a common-looking lad and a servant girl on the high road, in the immediate vicinity of Wylder Hall.

“He is his father’s son!” reflected lady Ann.

“He’s a chip off the old block!” said sir Wilton to himself. But he did not approve of the openness of the thing. Such things mustn’t be seen!

But then an ugly thought came into his mind.

“By Jove!” he said to himself, “it’s the damned Manson girl! I’ll lay my life on it! The fellow is too much of a puritan to flaunt his own foibles in the public eye. But, damn him, he doesn’t love his father enough not to flaunt his! Dead and buried, the rascal hauls them out of their graves for men to see! It’s all the damned socialism of his mother’s relations! Otherwise the fellow would be all a father could wish! I might have known it! The Armour blood was sure to break out! What business has he with what his father did before he was born! He was nowhere then, the insolent dog! He shall do as I tell him or go about his business—go and herd with the Mansons and all the rest of them if he likes, and be hanged to them!”

He sat in smouldering rage for a while, and then again his thoughts took shape in words, though not in speech.

“How those fools of Wylders will squirm when I cut the rascal off with a shilling, and settle the property on the man the little lady refused! But Dick will never be such a fool! He cannot reconcile his puritanism with such brazen-faced conduct! I shall never make a gentleman of him! He will revert to the original type! It had disappeared in his mother! What’s bred in the damned bone can never be got out of the damned flesh!”

Richard was at the moment walking with Mr. Wingfold in the rectory garden. They were speaking of what the Lord meant when he said a man must leave all for him.

As soon as he entered his father’s room some time later, he saw that something was wrong.

“What is it, father?” he said.

“Richard, sit down,” said sir Wilton. “I must have a word with you. What young man and woman were you walking with two nights ago, not far from Wylder Hall?”

“My brother and sister, sir—the Mansons.”

“My God, I thought as much!” cried the baronet, jumping to his feet. “Hold up your right hand,” he went on—sir Wilton was a magistrate—“and swear, so help you God, that you will never more in your life speak one word to either of those persons, or leave my house at once.”

“Father,” said Richard, his voice trembling a little, “I cannot obey you. To deny my friends and relations, even at your command, would be to forsake my Master. It would be to break the bonds that bind men, God’s children, together.”