It is pleasanter to contemplate that kind old face of Clive’s father, that sweet young blushing lady by his side, as the two ride homewards at sunset. The grooms behind in quiet conversation about horses, as men never tire of talking about horses. Ethel wants to know about battles; about lovers’ lamps, which she has read of in Lalla Rookh. “Have you ever seen them, uncle, floating down the Ganges of a night?” About Indian widows. “Did you actually see one burning, and hear her scream as you rode up?” She wonders whether he will tell her anything about Clive’s mother: how she must have loved Uncle Newcome! Ethel can’t bear, somehow, to think that her name was Mrs. Casey, perhaps he was very fond of her; though he scarcely ever mentions her name. She was nothing like that good old funny Miss Honeyman at Brighton. Who could the person be?—a person that her uncle knew ever so long ago—a French lady, whom her uncle says Ethel often resembles? That is why he speaks French so well. He can recite whole pages out of Racine. Perhaps it was the French lady who taught him. And he was not very happy at the Hermitage (though grandpapa was a very kind good man), and he upset papa in a little carriage, and was wild, and got into disgrace, and was sent to India? He could not have been very bad, Ethel thinks, looking at him with her honest eyes. Last week he went to the Drawing-room, and papa presented him. His uniform of grey and silver was quite old, yet he looked much grander than Sir Brian in his new deputy-lieutenant’s dress. “Next year, when I am presented, you must come too, sir,” says Ethel. “I insist upon it, you must come too!” “I will order a new uniform, Ethel,” says her uncle. The girl laughs. “When little Egbert took hold of your sword, uncle, and asked you how many people you had killed, do you know I had the same question in my mind; and I thought when you went to the Drawing-room, perhaps the King will knight him. But instead he knighted mamma’s apothecary, Sir Danby Jilks: that horrid little man, and I won’t have you knighted any more.”