Ralph, made meek by his misery, obediently turned into the room to the right of the door, his own special sanctum where he had worked and played ever since he could remember, and having brushed his wavy brown hair into a state of immaculate order went slowly back once more to the silent little hall which was not even enlivened now by the presence of old Mrs. Grice. Nothing was to be heard save the ticking of the clock and the low murmur of voices from the adjoining room, not a creature was there to take compassion on the shy desolate boy. He looked up at the black representation of Lord John Harsick and Katharine his wife, which hung upon the wall above the old oak chest, and the tears started to his eyes as he remembered how he had helped his father to mount this rubbing from a brass, some two or three years before. The stately old couple stood there holding each others’ hands, he fancied that they looked down on him with a sort of pity because he was left so utterly alone. He stood hesitatingly on the threshold of the study, dreading to enter, but at length impelled to move by a worse fear. “If they come out and catch me here they’ll think I’m eavesdropping!” he thought to himself, and therewith manfully turned the handle, and walked in. The study was in reality the drawing-room of the Rectory, a pretty room with a verandah and French windows opening on to it, and upon one side of the fireplace there was a cosy little recess where the Rector had been wont to keep his choicest flowers, and where the light from a little western window fell upon the marble bust of a sweet-faced woman--the mother whom Ralph could remember just in a vague dreamy fashion. Seated now at his father’s writing-table was an old gentleman with a kindly, astute face, and remarkably thick white hair. Standing with his back to the fireplace was a middle-aged man whom Ralph at once recognised from the photographs he had seen as his godfather, Sir Matthew Mactavish. He looked up anxiously into the shrewd Scottish face, with its reddish hair just touched with grey, its keen steel-coloured eyes, its somewhat wrinkled forehead and ready smile. It was a powerful and an attractive face, but with something about it curiously different to the faces to which Ralph had been accustomed; the genial country squires, and the country parsons had nothing in common with this brisk, managing man of the world. “Well, my boy,” he said with a kindly greeting, “I’m glad to see you. You’ll not remember me for you were but a little fellow when I was last here. Let me see, they call you Raphe, don’t they?” “Not Raphe, but Ralph,” said the boy, and into his mind there darted the recollection of a scene that had once been funny but now seemed pathetic, of a discussion upon his name between his father and two old antiquaries, and of how one of them had patted him on the head with the gruff-voiced injunction, “If any one calls you ‘Raphe’ tell him he’s a fool.”