"Well, dear?" said his mother enquiringly, as he burst into the morning-room, where she had been anxiously awaiting the result of the interview. "And now I hope things are all right." "All right?" echoed Hubert, his countenance ablaze with wrath and disgust. "All right? No, they're not, they're as wrong as they can be. Here am I set down to work every morning like a wretched schoolboy. I swear, it's damnable the way in which he treats me." "Oh, Hubert--hush!" cried his mother and sister in one breath, both horror-stricken. "Hush? Oh yes! Aren't we horrified?" he said jeeringly. "Women are so very easily shocked, I know. Faugh?" and he flung himself from the room. But it was not on his younger son's account that General Dorrien had come down that morning "in a state of thundercloud," as that graceless delinquent had facetiously put it; and to let the reader into the real cause, it will be necessary for him or her to assist in the discussion which took place previous to the unlucky Hubert being summoned to the library. "I don't really know what to think, much less what to _Bay_ or do," said the General. "You saw for yourself, Eleanor; you saw them together. Now, what do you make of it?" "Well, I do think it's too bad of Roland, and shows a great want of proper feeling on his part. After all these years he has been away he does not give us much of his society. He seems to be quite taken up with those--people," answered Mrs Dorrien, though, to do her justice, she answered with some reserve. Her heart was cold towards her eldest son, and not one spark of love had she for him; all was lavished on the younger. Yet, she told herself, she hoped she had a conscience. "You are right," said the General decisively. "It shows a complete want of proper feeling. To be hanging about the public roads like that with the girl! Why, I believe he was about to--pah! It is disgraceful-- disgusting and disgraceful, absolutely. Who are these Ingelows, by the way, Eleanor?" "Oh, I'm sure I don't know," she answered loftily, as if the bare suspicion of her knowing anything about them was an imputation to be resented. "I believe they are well-connected and all that. But that anything serious should be the outcome of this would be most deplorable, I should think." "It would, indeed. Highly deplorable, and in fact I won't entertain the idea of anything of the kind. Moreover, if what I hear is true, Roland spends a very great deal of his time in the society of this girl." By which remark it will appear that the town of Wandsborough was in no way behind its provincial contemporaries in its passion for gossip. "He may be only amusing himself. There may be nothing serious in it, after all," hazarded Mrs Dorrien, her conscience prompting her to try and urge a plea for the absent one. But she could not have struck upon a more unlucky chord.