the groom, who sat in damp and stolid silence behind. "And so I wrote
and asked you to come. Kind of me, wasn't it?"

"Most infernally kind," said Howard, with a sigh of a ton weight. "Had
you any idea that your father was building this little place? By the
way, I can't imagine Sir Stephen building anything that could be
described as 'little'.

"You are right," assented Stafford, with a nod. "I heard coming down
that it was a perfect palace of a place, a kind of palace of art
and--and that sort of thing. You know the governor's style?" His brows
were slightly knit for just a second, then he threw, as it were, the
frown off, with a smile. "No, I knew nothing about it; I knew as little
about it as I do of the governor himself and his affairs."

Howard nodded.

"When you come to think of it, Howard, isn't it strange that father and
son should know so little of each other? I have not seen the governor
for I forget how many years. He has been out of England for the last
fourteen or fifteen, with the exception of a few flying visits; and on
the occasion of those visits I was either at school on the Continent or
tramping about with a gun or a rod, and so we never met. I've a kind of
uneasy suspicion that my revered parent had no particular desire to
renew his acquaintance with his dutiful offspring; anyway, if he had,
he would have arranged a meeting. Seems rather peculiar; for in every
other respect his conduct as a parent has been above reproach."

"Those are scarcely the terms by which I should designate a liberality
which can only be described as criminally lavish, and an indifference