To these children the old man showed a peculiar and a noble devotion. He paid the mother a yearly allowance of no less than £400, on the strict condition that she should live out of England, and enter into no communication with the family. He was even at the charge of employing private agents to see that this condition was observed. In the choice of their occupations, their servants, their expenses, their very lap-dogs, nay, their governesses and tutors, he directed himself to the single object of making the boy and girl that which their high station would later require them to be; dying in 1858, he left his task as a sacred legacy to his wife, the children’s grandmother, who kept in view, with admirable firmness, that ideal of ancient lineage which her husband had so constantly cherished. Not that any hint of their coming responsibility was permitted to enter the children’s fresh young minds. Mary, until her seventeenth birthday, dressed upon less than a hundred a year; rode out attended by a groom in the plainest livery; and was permitted upon no occasion, save that of indisposition, to absent herself from morning prayers. Albert was thrust willy-nilly into the rough and tumble of public school life, and discovered, in the rude manliness of Eton, just what was needed to correct a somewhat oversensitive temperament. In a word, the first Lord Benthorpe had proved characteristically successful in this his last and (as it proved) posthumous task. His wife lived to purchase her grandchild his commission in a cavalry regiment, and to see the second Lord Benthorpe attain his majority amid those plaudits which the tenants of Placton loyally reserved for a family to which they owe their material and moral prosperity. As a soldier, young Lord Benthorpe, though quiet to a fault, proved deservedly popular. His entertainments, which were numerous, were marked by an absolute refinement, and, if he exceeded in expense, it was through no leaning towards ostentation, but rather from the natural desire of a rich and reserved young man to gather, by the sole means in his power, a number of acquaintance. He was sincerely glad when his regiment was ordered abroad; he saw active service in the Seychelles, he received in person the surrender of seventeen half-breeds of Princess Martha’s Own during the great mutiny of 1872, and was mentioned in despatches. His wound in the fleshy part of the leg, received during the dreadful affair at Pútti-Ghâl, is a matter so generally known that I need hardly allude to it, save to remind my readers that the incident is the subject of a fine steel engraving of Hogge’s now sold in its original state by Messrs Washington for the price of 21s., though soiled copies are obtainable at a considerable reduction.