At last, fifteen years after Skelton had left Deerchase, he returned to it as suddenly as he left it. He brought with him Bob Skinny, who had become a perfect monster of uppishness, airs, and conceit; Bulstrode, who was understood to be a remarkable scholar and Skelton’s assistant in preparing the great work that was to revolutionise the world; and Lewis Pryor, a black-eyed boy whom Skelton represented to be the orphan child of a friend of his, a professor at Cambridge. People were still talking about Skelton’s wonderful promise. He was then getting on towards forty years old, and had not written a line since “Voices of the People.” The subject he was engaged upon for his wonderful forthcoming book was not precisely known, but it was understood to be a philosophical work, which would not leave the Christian religion a leg to stand upon. CHAPTER VI. When Skelton’s arrival was known it made a tremendous sensation. Mrs. Blair turned a beautiful rosy red when Blair brought the news home. At thirty-five she was still girlish-looking, and her dark eyes were as bright as ever. “Ah, my girl,” cried Blair, with his offhand tenderness, “Skelton has never forgiven me for getting ahead of him with you; but if he had got ahead of me--why, damme, I’d have broken his neck for him long before this!” Sylvia Shapleigh felt a little ashamed, as she always did at the mention, or even the mere thought, of Skelton--she had been such a very, very great fool! and she had a lively apprehension of her mother’s course upon the occasion, which was fully justified by events. “Mr. Shapleigh,” began Mrs. Shapleigh one evening, the very first week after Skelton’s arrival at Deerchase, “you will have to go and call upon Richard Skelton, for it would break my heart if I did not see some of those elegant things he has brought home in that pile of boxes that came up from the wharf to-day.” “Certainly, my love, I shall call to see him. As his former guardian, I feel it incumbent; but, really, the fellow always interested me, for all his confounded supercilious airs.” “Well, Mr. Shapleigh, you seem to have altogether forgotten his treatment of Sylvia; and that English wife of his put it out of his power to marry again, just to spite my poor child.” Luckily Sylvia was out of the room during this; but just then she entered, with a book in her hand, and seated herself at the round mahogany table in the corner of the room, upon which a tall lamp burned with shaded softness. Mrs. Shapleigh wisely dropped that branch of the subject when Sylvia appeared. “Anyhow, Mr. Shapleigh,” resumed Mrs. Shapleigh, “we shall be obliged to ask Richard Skelton to dinner. We can’t get out of _that_.” “Very well, my darling love, we will have Skelton to dinner.”