"Drat the boy! What's he want to ride hell-for-leather like that for?" he
grumbled. "He'll go and kill himself one of these days as his father did
before him."

It was just twenty-five years since Piers' father had been carried dead
into Marshall's cottage, and Marshall had stumped up the long avenue to
bear the news to Sir Beverley. Piers was about the same age now as that
other Piers had been, and Marshall had no mind to take part in a similar
tragedy. It had been a bitter task, that of telling Sir Beverley that his
only son was dead; but to have borne him ill tidings of his grandson
would have been infinitely harder. For Sir Beverley had never loved his
son through the whole of his brief, tempestuous life; but his grandson
was the very core of his existence, as everyone knew, despite his
strenuous efforts to disguise the fact.

No, emphatically Marshall had not the faintest desire to have to inform
the old man that harm had befallen Master Piers, and his frown deepened
as he trudged up his little garden and heard the yelling voice and
galloping hoofs grow faint in the distance.

"The boy is madder even than his father was," he muttered darkly. "Bad
stock! Bad stock!"

He shook his head over the words, and went within. He was the only man
left on the estate who could remember the beautiful young Italian bride
whom Sir Beverley had once upon a time brought to reign there. It had
been a short, short reign, and no one spoke of it now,--least of all the
old, bent man who ruled like a feudal lord at Rodding Abbey, and of whom
even the redoubtable Marshall himself stood in awe.