Mrs Hawthorn came out at once from the little boudoir behind the piazza, whose cool Venetian blinds gave directly upon the part where they were sitting. ‘Mary, Mary!’ Mr Hawthorn cried, utterly regardless of his two visitors’ presence, ‘what on earth do you think has happened? Edward’s coming out to us—coming out immediately. Oh, my poor boy, my poor boy, this is too unexpected! He’s coming out to us at once, at once, without a single moment’s warning!’ Mrs Hawthorn took up the letter and read it through hastily with a woman’s quickness; then she laid it down again, and looked blankly at her trembling husband in evident distress; but neither of them said a single word to one another. The elder Dupuy was the first to break the ominous silence. ‘Not by the next steamer, I suppose?’ he inquired curiously. Mr Hawthorn nodded in reply. ‘Yes, yes; by the next steamer.’ As he spoke, Tom Dupuy glanced at his uncle with a meaning glance, and then went on stolidly as ever: ‘How about these cattle, though, Mr Hawthorn?’ The old man looked back at him half angrily, half contemptuously. ‘Go and look at the cattle yourself, if you like, Mr Tom,’ he said haughtily.—‘Here, Jo, you take young Mr Dupuy round to see those Cuban bullocks in the grass-piece, will you? I shall meet your uncle at the Legislative Council on Thursday, and then, if he likes, he can talk over prices with me. I have something else to do at present beside haggling and debating over the sale of bullocks; I must go down to Port-of-Spain immediately, immediately—this very minute.—You must please excuse me, Mr Dupuy, for my business is most important.—Dick, Isaac, Thomas!—some one of you there, get Pride of Barbadoes saddled at once, very fast, will you, and bring her round here to me at the front-door the moment she’s ready.’ ‘And Tom,’ the elder Dupuy whispered to his nephew confidentially, as soon as their host had gone back into the house to prepare for his journey, ‘I have business, too, in Port-of-Spain, immediately. You go and look at the bullocks if you like—that’s your department. I shall ride down the hills at once, and into town with old Hawthorn.’ Tom looked at him with a vacant stare of boorish unintelligence. ‘Why, what do you want to go running off like that for,’ he asked, open-mouthed, ‘without even waiting to see the cattle? What does it matter to you, I should like to know, whether old Hawthorn’s precious son is coming to Trinidad or not, Uncle Theodore?’