Some people think I should try bracing for him--exposing him like the other children. But I think it is best to be on the safe side. I shall be blamed anyhow, whatever happens, I know,” she would add with a smile. She would have convinced anyone; and she did convince herself. She thought she was only angry with Mar because it was so difficult to make him take proper precautions. She was certain that she wished nothing but his good. It may be supposed that the exhibition in the tent, the sudden surging up of Mar--the delicate boy whom nobody knew--into a distinct boyish personality, suddenly producing himself in the most attractive and characteristic way at Duke’s dinner, when she intended only Duke to be thought of, was gall and bitterness to Letitia. She was almost beside herself with rage and exasperation. It had been all planned for Duke. It had been intended to give him the aspect of the heir (which he was sure to be eventually), and if there can be supposed any more sharp deception, any more poignant disappointment than Letitia’s, when she saw the other boy, who was the shadow upon Duke’s sunshine, the barrier to his advancement, pushed to the front, and so conducting himself there as to make it for ever impossible to speak of him as of a sick and puny child--it would be very difficult to find it. That she could have strangled Mar, and also Duke and Letty, and everyone who was in the complot, in the exasperation of her soul, is not too much to say. She had to conceal this under the appearance of anxiety lest the boy should have harmed himself, and discoursed, as has been seen, on the danger of excitement for him with a bitterness and energy which went too far, and betrayed something of her real motive at least to some of her children. But that real motive was not a guilty one. It was only to keep Mar in the background and bring forward her own boy. That was all--only to make Duke first, which by an accident he was not--which he ought to be by age, the other being really no more than a child, a child to whom it was pernicious to be brought forward like that, to be forced out of the quiet life which was the only thing possible to him. Letitia found herself able to carry matters with a high hand, both with her conscience and those keen critics her children. Of course she was angry. It was the very worst thing that could have happened to Mar. And for his poor mother, who had fainted, what a shock!