The baronet was not angry with his son. On the contrary, for he was singularly just and self-accusing while pride was not up in arms, he had been thinking all day after the receipt of Benson's letter that he was deficient in cordiality, and did not, by reason of his excessive anxiety, make himself sufficiently his son's companion: was not enough, as he strove to be, mother and father to him.; preceptor and friend; previsor and associate. He had not to ask his conscience where he had lately been to blame towards the System. He had slunk away from Raynham in the very crisis of the Magnetic Age, and this young woman of the parish (as Benson had termed sweet Lucy in his letter) was the consequence. Yes! pride and sensitiveness were his chief foes, and he would trample on them. To begin, he embraced his son: hard upon an Englishman at any time--doubly so to one so shamefaced at emotion in cool blood, as it were. It gave him a strange pleasure, nevertheless. And the youth seemed to answer to it; he was excited. Was his love, then, beginning to correspond with his father's as in those intimate days before the Blossoming Season? But when Richard, inarticulate at first in his haste, cried out, "My dear, dear father! You are safe! I feared--You are better, sir? Thank God!" Sir Austin stood away from him. "Safe?" he said. "What has alarmed you?" Instead of replying, Richard dropped into a chair, and seized his hand and kissed it. Sir Austin took a seat, and waited for his son to explain. "Those doctors are such fools!" Richard broke out. "I was sure they were wrong. They don't know headache from apoplexy. It's worth the ride, sir, to see you. You left Raynham so suddenly.--But you are well! It was not an attack of real apoplexy?" His father's brows contorted, and he said, No, it was not. Richard pursued: "If you were ill, I couldn't come too soon, though, if coroners' inquests sat on horses, those doctors would be found guilty of mare-slaughter. Cassandra'll be knocked up. I was too early for the train at Bellingham, and I wouldn't wait. She did the distance in four hours and three- quarters. Pretty good, sir, wasn't it?" "It has given you appetite for dinner, I hope," said the baronet, not so well pleased to find that it was not simple obedience that had brought the youth to him in such haste. "I'm ready," replied Richard. "I shall be in time to return by the last train to-night. I will leave Cassandra in your charge for a rest." His father quietly helped him to soup, which he commenced gobbling with an eagerness that might pass for appetite. "All well at Raynham?" said the baronet. "Quite, sir." "Nothing new?" "Nothing, sir." "The same as when I left?" "No change whatever!"