it.

But the culminating point had arrived one day, when Val, half laughingly,
half seriously, told the dowager, who had been provoking him almost
beyond endurance, that she might spare her angling in regard to Maude,
for Hartledon would never bite. But that he took his pleasant face beyond
her reach, it might have suffered, for her fingers were held out
alarmingly.

From that time she took another little scheme into her hands--that of
getting Percival Elster out of his brother's favour and his brother's
house. Val, on his part, seriously advised his brother _not_ to allow the
Kirtons to come to Hartledon; and this reached the ears of the dowager.
You may be sure it did not tend to soothe her. Lord Hartledon only
laughed at Val, saying they might come if they liked; what did it matter?

But, strange to say, Val Elster was as a very reed in the hands of the
old woman. Let her once get hold of him, and she could turn him any way
she pleased. He felt afraid of her, and bent to her will. The feeling may
have had its rise partly in the fear instilled into his boyhood, partly
in the yielding nature of his disposition. However that might be, it was
a fact; and Val could no more have openly opposed the resolute,
sharp-tongued old woman to her face than he could have changed his
nature. He rarely called her anything but "ma'am," as their nurse had
taught him and his brothers and sisters to do in those long-past years.

Before eight o'clock the guests had all assembled in the drawing-room,
except the countess-dowager and Maude. Lord Hartledon was going about
amongst them, talking to one and another of the beauties of this, his
late father's place; scarcely yet thought of as his own. He was a tall