drumming on the table and glancing at Victoria with vague disapproval.
Mr. Flint read it and gave it back to the Honourable Hilary, who groaned
again and looked out of the window.

"Why do you feel badly about it?" asked Victoria. "I'd be proud of him,
if I were you."

"Proud of him" echoed Mr. Vane, grimly. "Proud of him!"

"Victoria, what do you mean?" said Mr. Flint.

"Why not?" said Victoria. "He's done nothing to make you ashamed.
According to that clipping, he's punished a man who richly deserved to be
punished, and he has the sympathy of an entire county."

Hilary Vane was not a man to discuss his domestic affliction with
anybody, so he merely grunted and gazed persistently out of the window,
and was not aware of the fact that Victoria made a little face at him as
she left the room. The young are not always impartial judges of the old,
and Victoria had never forgiven him for carrying to her father the news
of an escapade of hers in Ripton.

As he drove through the silent forest roads on his way homeward that
afternoon, the Honourable Hilary revolved the new and intensely
disagreeable fact in his mind as to how he should treat a prodigal who
had attempted manslaughter and was a fugitive from justice. In the
meantime a tall and spare young man of a red-bronze colour alighted from
the five o'clock express at Ripton and grinned delightedly at the
gentlemen who made the station their headquarters about train time. They
were privately disappointed that the gray felt hat, although