However, Richard’s sudden popularity was the most fortunate incident possible for his child. Many people, after the first eager interest with which they had received the romantic story of little Val’s first appearance at Rosscraig, began to doubt it because it was so romantic, and pointed out to each other the much more likely and sensible way of accounting for it. “The beggar-wife is all a myth, depend upon it,” said the Dowager-Duchess,--“a myth founded upon the popular conviction that Dick Ross was unfortunate in his marriage. Most of us are unfortunate in our marriages; but it seldom comes to that sort of thing. No, no; depend upon it, the child came with his father, as was natural and proper. What better explanation would you have?” There can be no doubt that this method of introducing a child who is heir to a peerage is a much more comprehensible and reasonable one than a wild tale by which he was represented as having been thrust in at the hall-door on a stormy night. There had been much excitement caused by the story; but that very excitement was a proof to many sober people that it was ridiculous. Why search further? they said. His father had come home on a visit, a very rising young man, and extremely agreeable, and he had brought the child with him. Valentine’s appearance confirmed the district in this sensible view of the question. In his velvet tunic and collar of falling lace, he was utterly unlike anything but a dainty little dandy born to luxury and bred with every care, whose cheek the winds had never been allowed to touch rudely. To look at the child was quite enough, said many. He to have been wandering about the country with a tramp!--the idea was preposterous. He was a little aristocrat all over--from his dark curls to the buckles on his dainty shoes. And when the gentry of the country inquired, as they almost all did individually, into the origin of the other absurd story, it was universally traced to the servants’ hall. My Lady Gifford’s maid had got it from Joseph the footman at Rosscraig, and the Dowager-Duchess had heard it from an under-gardener who kept the lodge, and with whom she did not disdain an occasional gossip. There is no limit to the imagination of persons in that class of life, many people said; and it became a mark of fashion on Eskside by which you could decide whether any individual really belonged to the cream of society or not. Belief in the common-sense theory that (of course) Richard had brought his son to his mother’s care, was for a long time the shibboleth of the county. Those who had faith in the romantic part of the story were given over to a reprobate imagination, and stamped themselves vulgar at once by adopting a theory so ridiculous. Nothing could have been more fortunate for the young heir. Lady Eskside awoke to the importance of maintaining this “sensible” view before she had been tempted to utter the true occasion of her joy to any dear friend. Nobody