Perhaps it was a relief to them all when the gig arrived at last, and Colonel Sutherland bade farewell to Marchmain. The old man was troubled because he trusted his niece, and knew that she would not deceive his expectations; and he was troubled because he could _not_ trust his nephew, and did not feel at all warranted in undertaking for him. While Horace, for his part, brooded with renewed anger, though he professed to expect it, over his father's refusal of assistance, and was tired of amusing Colonel Sutherland by a show of good humour, all the more when his uncle seemed unlikely to be of much service to him; and the difficulty with which Susan kept her composure, and the unusual tumult of personal feeling in which the poor child felt herself, made the continued effort almost too much for her. The gig arrived at last. The Colonel said his last good-bye, and drove away from the inhospitable door which he had seen for the first time three days ago, leaving Susan, Horace, and Peggy outside, watching his departure, and waving farewells to him; and leaving, besides that external demonstration, a revolution in the house, and, for good or for evil, the germs, to these two young people, of a new world. CHAPTER XXII. The Colonel drove away, out of sight of Marchmain and its moor, with thoughts many and troubled. This visit, which he had undertaken with so much simplicity of intention, had already thrown a disturbing influence into his life; he went away, bearing on his own very heart and conscience the burden of an unmanageable boy, and a girl neglected and suffering. An unmanageable boy! The Colonel summed up his non-comprehension of the character of Horace in these uncomplimentary words, and it was his first experience of the kind. He had never learned to doubt the honest common-places about youthful openness and candour which good hearts, like his own, receive and repeat so authoritatively. He could have laid down rules to any one, with a little mild dogmatism, and a world of kindness, for the management of "the young;" and would have told you, with affectionate complaisance, and not without an idea that judicious training had much to do with it, that his Addiscombe cadet had never given him a moment's anxiety. That was very true of honest Ned, to whom nature had given, not her fairy wealth of genius, but something safer; her gift of competency, if one may use the expression--a sincere, straightforward, sagacious soul--a judgment wise without knowing it, and true by instinct, to which craft or concealment were things impossible. Colonel Sutherland, "with his experience," as he said, did not believe in the youthful mystics, the Manfreds and Werters. He smiled in his kindly superiority and said, "Youth at bottom was very consistent in its inconsistencies, and very manageable if you took pains enough, and knew the right way." The Colonel was a little mortified, accordingly, to be obliged to conclude that he knew very little of