As he grew older he became painfully conscious, however, of the different treatment of his younger brother and himself; he saw how he was permitted to go threadbare and shabby, with tattered cap and seamy boots, while little Rookleigh--or Rook as he called him--was kept like a princeling in purple and fine linen, and all the while their father seemed careless or oblivious of the difference. "I'll not stay here, Patty," said Derval one day in great soreness of heart, while smarting under some new affront; "I'll run away." "Run away, child, and let the Pixies or the Long Cripple get thee!" exclaimed his old nurse. But Derval had nearly ceased to fear these things now, and he had no dread of any created thing, though he did shrink from the malice and the severe and vindictive eyes of his stepmother, and from contending with the low forces of her small and narrow mind. Had Greville Hampton shown more, or even any remarkable preference for his first-born than for little Rookleigh, there might have been some reason for her jealousy though none for her cruelty; but so absorbed was he, as we have said, in the novel and pleasant task of money-making, that he never gave a thought at all to Derval. As the latter approached boyhood, and Rookleigh childhood from mere infancy, the continued difference in the treatment of both, in food, raiment, and even in toys, was perceptible to all. Derval shunned alike the dining-room and drawing-room, for _she_ was sure to be in either one or other. He lurked in the stable, the gardens, on the sea-shore, anywhere to be away from her, and his father never missed him apparently. Rookleigh, petted, master, and more than master of the establishment, grew up a froward, petulant, sullen and cunning child--a greedy one too, who ate his cakes and sweetmeats in secrecy and haste, sharing none and nothing with his elder brother or anyone else; and in many ways, as her own peculiar rearing, he was becoming the counterpart of his mother. Again and again had the latter hinted at sending Derval away somewhere, to hoard or be bound apprentice, she cared not to what; but time passed on, till he attained his fourteenth year, and his half-brother was seven years old, with his mother's chestnut hair and her cunning yellow-hazel eyes, but with a strange shifty expression in them. At home in his father's house, Derval was beginning to feel homeless now. Though impulsive and enthusiastic, what to him were now the leafy rustle of the woods and apple-orchards of Finglecombe; the trill of the lark above his head, the white-flecked azure of the summer sky, the cornfields ripe for the sickle, the glare of the golden sunshine, the soft curve of the distant hills, the bold rocky coast of Devon, and the sea that lapped it? He only longed to be far away from them all and from "that woman," for Finglecombe was no longer home to him; no welcome was there, and love had departed.