you to rest after your long journey, and we shall meet at dinner,” said the politest of fathers. Val sat staring before him half stupefied when he found himself left alone in the beautiful room. This was not the kind of way in which a son just arrived would be treated at Eskside. How much he always had to explain to his grandmother, to tell her of, to hear about! What a breathless happy day the first day at home always was, so full of talk, news, consultations, interchange of the family nothings that are nothing, yet so sweet! Val’s journey had only been from Leghorn, no further, so he was not in the least fatigued; and why he should be shut up here in his room to rest he had not a notion, any desire to rest being far from his thoughts. After a while he got up and examined the room, which was full of handsome old furniture. How he wished Dick had been with him, who would have enjoyed all those cabinets, and followed every line of the carvings with interest! Valentine himself cared little for such splendours. And finally he went out, and found as usual a school-fellow round the first corner, and marched about the strange beautiful place till it was time for dinner, and felt himself again. It was very strange, however, to English--or rather Scotch--Valentine, to find himself in this Italian house, with a man so polished, so cultivated, so exotic as his father for his sole companion. Not that they saw very much of each other. They met at the twelve o’clock breakfast, where every dish was new to Val, for the _ménage_ was thoroughly Italian; and at dinner on the days when Richard dined at home. Sometimes he took his handsome boy with him to great Italian houses, where, in the flutter of rapid conversation which he could not follow, poor Val found himself hopelessly left out, and looked as _gauche_ and unhappy as any traditionary lout of his age; and sometimes Val himself would join an English party at a hotel, where the hits to leg and the Ladies’ Challenge Cup would again be the chief subjects of conversation; if not (which was still more dreary) the ladies’ eager comparing of notes over Lady Southsea’s garden party, or that charming Lady Mary Northwood’s afternoon teas. On the whole, Val felt that his father’s banquets were best adapted to the locality; and when a lovely princess, with jewels as old as her name and as bright as her eyes, condescended to put up with his indifferent French, the young man was considerably elated, and proud of his father and his father’s society--as, when the same fair lady congratulated Richard upon the _beaux yeux_ of Monsieur _son fils_, his father was of him. One of the rare evenings which they spent together, Val informed his father of Lord Eskside’s eager preparations for the ensuing election, and of the place he was himself destined to take in the eyes of his county and country. Richard Ross did not receive this information as his son expected. His face grew immediately overcast.