"What can I do?" he thought. "If I take him away from his grandfather, I
shall break his heart; if I let him remain, he will grow up a stranger
to me, and care more for that drunken old hypocrite than for his own
father. But then, what could an ignorant, heavy dragoon like me do with
such a child? What could I teach him, except to smoke cigars and idle
around all day with his hands in his pockets?"

So the anniversary of that 30th of August, upon which George had seen
the advertisement of his wife's death in the _Times_ newspaper, came
round for the first time, and the young man put off his black clothes
and the shabby crape from his hat, and laid his mournful garments in a
trunk in which he kept a packet of his wife's letters, her portrait, and
that lock of hair which had been cut from her head after death. Robert
Audley had never seen either the letters, the portrait, or the long
tress of silky hair; nor, indeed, had George ever mentioned the name of
his dead wife after that one day at Ventnor, on which he learned the
full particulars of her decease.

"I shall write to my cousin Alicia to-day, George," the young barrister
said, upon this very 30th of August. "Do you know that the day after
to-morrow is the 1st of September? I shall write and tell her that we
will both run down to the Court for a week's shooting."

"No, no, Bob; go by yourself; they don't want me, and I'd rather--"

"Bury yourself in Figtree Court, with no company but my dogs and
canaries! No, George, you shall do nothing of the kind."

"But I don't care for shooting."