Colonel Norcott’s first visit (since his return) to his stepfather’s house had not been hailed with much satisfaction by that gentleman. Mr. Baker’s habits, despite his twenty-seven years or so of married life, were decidedly those of an old bachelor; his hours for meals and family prayers, his times for rising up and lying down, were fixed and immutable; and the erratic proceedings of his stepson, though they were not allowed to actually interfere with those arrangements, did decidedly prevent their being carried through with that staid decorum which was so precious in the sight of the _ci-devant_ solicitor. The principles too, or rather the lack of principles, evidenced by the gallant Colonel were very obnoxious to Mr. Baker. He was a man utterly without toleration for the weaknesses of others; and, the power of self-command being inherent in his own nature, he could not understand that power being either impossible or even difficult of attainment in others. To do right was so entirely his intention, that he was misled by that very sincerity of desire into the belief that he _was_ doing right. His leanings were also so completely towards the proper behaved and virtuous, that, while he would have been a pattern stepfather to a prudent, sensible young man, “who needed no repentance,” he turned with feelings of absolute dislike and repulsion from the sinner whom a more forbearing, or rather a more judiciously controlling, course of conduct might possibly have assisted in turning from the error of his ways. The intelligence that Colonel Norcott had met with an accident that would probably end fatally flew on the wings of rumour to Lingfield Cottage, preceding by half an hour, at the least, the judicious message sent by kind-hearted Lady Guernsey to the mother of the injured man. Mrs. Baker, notwithstanding her many trials, was still for her age, which was under seventy, an active and a healthy woman. _Habit_ had likewise, to a certain degree, hardened her to suffering; and moreover, that unlucky Fred--who, as a pretty blue-eyed boy, used to keep “her heart in her mouth,” to use a simple mother’s phrase, with his daring tricks and perilous escapades--was probably not quite so dear to her, when a hardened, battered _roué_ of forty-five, as he had been in his days of comparative, but still highly troublesome, innocence.