“A right to know! I don’t understand you,” said Val, beginning to feel the fiery blood tingling in his veins; but he thought of Vi, and restrained himself. “He is Brown,” he said, with a laugh; “that’s all I know about him. You’re welcome to know as much as I do; though as for right, I can’t tell who has the right. You can ask the men at the rafts, who have just the same means of information as I.” While this conversation was going on, Violet had spoken softly to Dick. “Mr Brown,” she said, being naturally respectful of all strangers, “I am so glad of what you told us about Mr Ross.” “Thank you, ma’am,” said Dick; “you could not be more glad to hear than I am to tell. I should like to let every one know that though he’s only a boy, he’s been the making of me.” “But--I beg your pardon--are you older than a boy?” said Vi. Dick laughed. “When you have to work for your living, you’re a man before you know,” he said, with a certain oracular wisdom that sank deeply into Vi’s mind. But the next moment her father called her somewhat sharply, and she awoke with a sigh to the consciousness that this wonderful day was over, and that she must go away. CHAPTER XX. This was Val’s last summer at Eton; he went away with deep regret, as all well-conditioned boys do, and was petted and made much of at home in the interval between his school and his university life. Lady Eskside, who had once carried little Val with her, with care so anxious, was proud and happy beyond description now when Val accompanied her anywhere with that air of _savoir faire_ and intimate knowledge of the world which distinguishes his kind. He had already a circle much enlarged from hers, and knew people whom even the Dowager Duchess, who was more in the world than Lady Eskside, could not pretend to know. He was a head taller than good-natured Lord Hightowers, and a thousand times handsomer and better bred. “But not the least like his father,” said her Grace, with pointed particularity. “Not so like as he was,” said Lady Eskside, not unprepared for this attack; “but I can still see the resemblance--though the difference of complexion is bewildering to those who don’t know both faces so well as I do,” she added, with a smile. To be sure, no one else could know the two faces as well as she did. Val was extremely well received in the county, and considered, young as he was, an acquisition to general society; and was asked far and wide to garden-parties, which were beginning to come into fashion, and to the few dances which occurred now and then. He had to go, too, to various entertainments given by the new people in Lord Eskside’s feus. During Val’s boyhood, the feus which the old lord and his factor laid out so carefully had been built upon, to the advantage of the shopkeepers in Lasswade, for one thing; and a row of, on the whole, rather handsome houses, in solid white stone, somewhat urban in architecture for the locality, and built