was being trained by all the influences round him--the art of mastering himself. CHAPTER XV. Val had grown to be sixteen, tall and strong, towering far above the old lord, and even above his father, who had made another visit to Eskside, and had seen his son, and regarded him with more approval than he did when Val was seven years old. The older he grew, however, the less the boy resembled Richard, whose features, settling into middle age, no longer even resembled themselves--a thing which few people took into consideration. Many persons in the county expressed their surprise, indeed, on seeing them together, that they could ever have supposed Valentine to be like his father--without in the least perceiving that the Honourable Richard Ross, who was now Secretary of Legation in Florence, and had every chance of rising to the post of Ambassador the very next time that a wave of promotion came, was almost more unlike young Dick Ross, Lady Eskside’s fair-haired boy. But Richard himself was very civil to his son, and inquired after his studies, and recounted his own Eton experiences, and volunteered advice about Oxford in a way which gratified all the family. The intercourse between the father and son was perfectly polite and civil, though, on Val’s side at least, there was little warm feeling in it; but both took from this meeting a sentiment of satisfaction, not to say something like pride in each other. Valentine on his side perceived his father’s easy superiority in culture and knowledge of the world to the rural magnates who formed society at Eskside, with a sense of increased consequence which is always agreeable; while Richard looked upon the handsome bold boy, the soft oval of whose boyish face was yet unmarred by any manly growth on lip or cheek, with a curious mingled feeling of pride in this being who belonged to himself, and repugnance to the creature who recalled so strongly another image most unlike his own. Valentine possessed in a high degree that air of distinction which does not always accompany, as it ought, the highest birth. Beside him Lord Hightowers was as a ploughman, clumsy-footed, heavy-mannered, the very embodiment of the common in opposition to the refined. How did this come about? “Val is very like the picture of your grandfather--the Raeburn, as you call it; though it would be more respectful to say the tenth lord,” Lady Eskside said to her son, with a slight faltering. “To be a Raeburn is some distinction, but the tenth lord was nobody in particular,” said the _dilettante_, ignoring the subject of the likeness. For, indeed, as he developed, Valentine was the handsomest Ross that had been seen on Eskside for generations, though the dark curls pushed off his bold forehead, and his great liquid eyes full of light, and his form, which was all spring and grace and elasticity, represented another race altogether than the lords of Eskside.