This was the man, who since they were boys, had been Arthur Curtis’s chief friend. He himself was the only son of Sir John, a true rural potentate, a man whose life was full of stolid dignity and duty, made steady, and in a dull matter of fact manner, noble, by the proud sense of obligation to his country, his son, and his dependents, such as long descent and elevated position sometimes give. Sir John Curtis might sometimes be ridiculous, but he was always respectable, making an aim at his duty in a large, conscientious, stupid way, in which there was a certain obtuse grandeur. He carried this into the smallest detail of his life, and the result was, that he was held by most people to be pompous, and admired by some as the chief source of serious comedy in his neighbourhood. But his life was a blurred version, surrounded by all kinds of imperfections of a noble ideal--a thing not always perceived by his wife and his son, to whom however Sir John’s deficiencies, on the other hand, were very plain. And Arthur, for the time at least, was almost as contradictory of his father as Lewis was. He was light-minded and heedless, idle, foolish yet clever, generous yet selfish; the kind of young man who is always in scrapes, often in the wrong, yet rarely, or never, unbeloved. He had been idle at the University, and had not taken his degree--then had gone home for a time and had done nothing. And now this last and most serious scrape of all had been brought on, as it were, by the most virtuous resolution of his life. It was his mother’s earnest desire that he should enter public life, in one way or other; and Arthur himself had been dazzled by the chances of diplomacy, an opening into which seemed before him, and had come now, in a sudden fit of industry and virtue, to see if, by the help of a noted “coach,” he could “pull through” his examinations, and get the University stamp, though late, impressed upon him. There had been no particular reason why he had not achieved that University stamp before. He was a tolerable scholar, and had meant honours--but had not been industrious enough to attain them, and had thrown up the milder standard in disgust. Thus he had come to Underhayes, intending better than, perhaps, he had ever steadfastly intended in his life; and lo! Nancy Bates was the result.