Jasper was not one to have cherished those tender recollections of infantine joys and sorrows, which with some men remain green and fresh to the last. He had, to use his own expression, to ‘hark back’ with painful effort and purpose, ere he could reproduce before his mental vision the long past of his early boyhood. ‘I have a vague notion,’ said he, after an interval of this appeal to memory, ‘that my mother gave me more sweetmeats than were good for me, and that she, and I too, seemed to stand in awe of my father. I’m sure I don’t know why, unless it were because he was serious and silent—a grave Spanish Don, as I used to think. But she said too that he had been of a livelier mood once, and something about his high spirits having deserted him just when the world began to smile. My old nurse—what was her name, I wonder?—Wiggins, Priggins—all nurses are named something of the sort, and all combine to dote over the little wretches that torment them—used to talk about the governor’s sad looks dating from the loss of that young sister of mine. She would have been younger than Lucy, older than Blanche, I take it. But why, in the name of common-sense, a man of the world should never forget the loss of a chit in the nursery—that is, if it was all on the square—but then, again, the motive!’ And the captain’s arching eyebrows and the compression of his thin lips were very expressive of his readiness to believe the very worst that could be believed as to his nearest and dearest, if only a plausible reason for such villainy could be alleged. ‘If it had been myself now,’ he muttered, as he sent the red ball, with a mechanical precision that proved him a dexterous pool-player, into pocket after pocket of the green table; ‘but even then the governor, who had Apollyon’s own luck, did not need to cut off the entail by illegal methods. He’s no life-tenant of Carbery, as he makes me feel whenever our views don’t exactly coincide; could leave it to my sisters; or back again, if he chose, to the De Vere lot; and so, what interest he could have had in spiriting away little Mabel Denzil, is a question that I defy Œdipus, or a modern racing prophet, to answer.’ Having said which, the captain rang the bell for something to drink, drank that something, and immersed his fine faculties in the delightful study of a sporting newspaper. Jasper had not had leisure to thread his way very far through the labyrinth of darkling vaticinations, so dear to men who like himself are of the horse, horsey, as to probable or certain winners of important events to come off, or to discriminate with sufficient nicety between the inherent truth or falsehood of the reports that made the barometer of the betting world oscillate so wildly between panic and exultation, before the grinding of wheels on the smooth gravel announced the arrival of the carriage, and that Sir Sykes’s ward was at the threshold of Carbery Court, her future home.