That their father was undignified in his apparently uncalled-for agitation as to the Indian orphan’s arrival, was too evident not to be recognised by even the most dutiful of daughters. But both Blanche and Lucy willingly accounted for the baronet’s restlessness on the ground of the revival of early associations, acting on the nerves of one whose health was no longer robust. ‘Let her only come here and quietly drop into her place among us,’ said the elder sister to the younger; ‘and depend upon it, papa will find her presence at Carbery as unexciting as though she were a supplementary daughter returning “for good,” as the girls call it, from a boarding-school.’ Jasper could, had it so pleased him, have considerably enlightened the ignorance of his unsuspecting sisters. But the captain prudently said nothing, and did not ostensibly keep watch upon his father’s actions, or deviate much from his own habit of indolently hanging about the stables, the kennels wherein sleek pointers and shaggy retrievers howled and rattled their chains, the billiard-room, and other resorts of ingenuous youth. The baronet’s nervousness was not in itself surprising to him, in whose memory was fresh the conversation which he had overheard while lurking in the mean garden of _The Traveller’s Rest_; but he could only conjecture what might be the hidden springs that prompted a course of conduct difficult to reconcile with a clean conscience and a secure worldly position. ‘I never,’ said Jasper to himself musingly, as he knocked about the balls on the billiard-table, ‘heard a word against the governor. He was awfully needy and that sort of thing once, of course; but I never knew there to be a whisper of any sharp practice either at écarté or with the bones. Had there been such, some good-natured fellow or other about the clubs would have let fall a hint of it before now in my hearing, or some servant would have tattled, when I wore a jacket and was Master Jasper. He’s not much liked, my father, but respected he is. I doubt if many, who fluked by a lucky chance upon a great fortune, get so civilly spoken of behind their backs.’