At the foot of the terraced slope, the wide, graveled path down which Lady Cressage had led Christian described a formal curve to the right, across a lawn which he recognized as belonging to his morning’s experiences. The angle of the high, domed conservatory recalled itself to him. Beyond it, on the same side, would be the window from which he had quitted the house.

To the left, a smaller footpath turned into still another garden, and he was glad that his companion moved this way. They were in a relatively small inclosure, hedged upon three sides by closely knit high walls of box; the straggling, untrimmed profusion of this tall growth, through which a multitude of sweet-briers thrust still farther upward their dipping and interlaced green rods, gave the place a homely if unkempt aspect. On the fourth side rose the blue-gray masonry of the castle itself—an ancient curtain stretched between two towers. The autumn sunlight lay upon this stained old wall, and warmed it, and glowed softly among the leaves and saffron blossoms of the great rose-tree trained upon it. This garden preserved the outlines of some former quaint arrangement of walks and beds, but these were comfortably softened everywhere, and in part obscured, by the untrammeled freedom of vegetation. Even over the moldering red tiles of the paths mosses had been suffered to creep unmolested. A few late roses were in bloom here and there, and at one corner there rose a colony of graceful white lilies, the scent of which filled the air. It was all very restful and charming, and Christian, pausing to gaze about him, gave little exclamations of pleasure at what he saw.

In the center of the garden, surrounded by a low seat of weather-worn woodwork, was what seemed to be a fountain, culminating in a piece of statuary, so blackened and battered by time and storm that little could be made out of its creator’s intentions. Christian, with some murmured inquiry, led the way toward this—and then perceived that Lord Julius, who had been sitting at the other and sunny side of the statue, was standing now in the path, confronting the new-comers with a friendly smile.

“This is my particular haunt at Caer-mere,” he explained to the young man.

“In so huge a place, one is lost if he does not fasten upon a special corner or nook of some sort, and send down roots in it and make it his own. This was my mother’s garden, and for over fifty years now I have bargained with one generation of head gardeners after another to leave it alone—as she left it. When Cheltnam came, he was so famous a person that I submitted to his budding some new varieties on the old wall-rose there—but, bless me, even that is thirty years ago—before either of you was born. I see you young people have lost no time in becoming acquainted.”

Edith Cressage looked into the old gentleman’s eyes for a moment before she replied. They had exchanged this same glance—on her side at once puzzled, suspicious, defiant; on his full of a geniality possibly pointed with cynicism—very often during the last four years, without affecting by it any prepossession or prejudice in either’s mind. “We met by accident in the upper fruit-walk, and I introduced myself. It must be quite luncheon time. Shall we go in?” She added, as upon an afterthought, and with another steadfast look into his face, “I have promised to show him over the house and the castle.”

“Admirable!” said Lord Julius, cordially.

He looked at his watch. “We will follow you in a very few moments, if we may. I dare say he is as ready for luncheon as I am, but I want to show him my old garden first.”

“Oh, let me stop too!” she exclaimed, without an instant’s hesitation. “May I confess it?—when you’re not here I call it my garden, too. I knew it was your mother’s—and I was always going to ask you to tell me about her, but the opportunity never offered. It is the one really perfect spot at Caermere, even to me. And I can understand how infinitely these old associations add to its charms for you! I shall truly not be in the way if I stop?”

The elder man regarded her with a twinkling eye from under his broad hat-brim as he shook his head. “To the contrary, we are both delighted,” he answered, amiably enough. He began leading the way at this, and the two young people, walking perforce very close together on the narrow path, followed at his heels.

He pointed out to them that the fountain, which he could not remember being in working order even in his boyhood, was built over the ancient well of the castle. The statue apparently dated from William and Mary’s time; at least, it was very like the objects they set up at Hampton Court. Part of its pedestal was made of three Ogham stones, which were said to have stood by the well in former times. Flint knives and other primitive weapons had been found in the garden. Antiquaries were not agreed as to the possibility of the well having been in existence at any very remote period, but it was not unlikely that this small garden had been the center of interest—perhaps the scene of Druidical sacrifices, or even of the famous conversion of the tribe resident here by St. David—at the beginning of things. These speculations as to precise localities were interesting, but scarcely convincing. The wall at the end was a more definite affair. It had been built after the Third Crusade by Stephen de la Tour, as the Normanized name went then.

“Ah, the name has not always been spelled the same then?” interrupted Christian here. He spoke with an eagerness which the abstract interest of the query seemed hardly to warrant.

“Heavens, no!” said Lord Julius. “It has been Tor with one ‘r’ and with two; it has been de la Tour, as I said, and Tour without the ‘de la,’ and Toure, and I know of at least one branch of the people of the name of Tower who are undoubtedly of our stock. It is quite conceivable that many others of them are, too.”

“Then the forms of names can be altered at will?” pursued Christian. “If a man says, ‘I will spell it so and so,’ then it is all right?”

“Oh, yes,” explained the other. “Often two spellings exist side by side. Witness the Seymours a few years ago. You had one brother writing it Seymour and another St. Maur. The latter is now the official spelling—for the present, at least.”

“This is extremely interesting to me,” the young man cried. “So I may keep my name as I have always borne it! I may write myself ‘Christian Tower’! That lifts a load from my mind. I had been unhappy to think of abandoning the name my father liked. He always both spelled and pronounced it ‘Tower,’ and that is why I shall be so glad to do the same.”

An acute kind of silence rested upon the group for an awkward minute.

“Oh, don’t let us have anymore archaeology before luncheon, Lord Julius,” put in the lady then. “Caermere so reeks with history that one must take it in small installments or be overwhelmed altogether. You were going to tell us about your mother, Lord Julius, and how you remember her, here in this dear old garden. And positively nothing has been changed since!”

“I mustn’t go quite so far as that,” said the old man, smilingly. He seemed grateful to her for the digression. “A certain systematic renovation has, of course, been necessary; I have arranged with the gardeners to manage that. I dare say there are scarcely any plants or roots here now which were individually in existence in my mother’s time; but their children, their descendants, are here in their places. Except for Cheltnam’s buds on the wall there, I don’t think any novelties have been introduced. If so, it was against my wish. The lilies in that corner, for example, are lineal progeny, heaven knows how many times removed, of the lilies my mother planted there. These roses are slips from other slips of the old cabbage and damask and moss roses she used to sit and look at with her crewel-work in her lap. The old flowers are gone, and yet they are not gone. In the same way, my mother has been dead for sixty years, and yet this is still her garden, and she is still here—here in the person of me, her son, and of Christian, her great-grandson.”

“And I,” commented Lady Cressage, upon a sudden smiling impulse, “I alone am an intruding new species—like one of Cheltnam’s ‘niphetos’ buds on the old rose. I hasten to extricate myself.” And with a bright little nod and mock half-courtesy, she caught her gown in one hand, wheeled round and moved quickly down the path and through the hedge.

The two men watched her till she vanished.

“She is a beautiful lady,” observed Christian, with enthusiasm; “and very courteous, too.”

Lord Julius offered no remark upon this, but stood for a little with his gaze apparently fixed on the point whence she had disappeared. Then, without turning his head, he said in a gently grave way:

“If I were you, Christian, I would make as few allusions, in mixed company, to my father as possible.”

“Ah, yes! this is what I desired to discuss with you!” said the young man, stoutly. He swung round to face the other, and his eyes sparkled with impatience. “Everybody avoids mention of him; they turn to something else when I speak his name—all but those abominable young men who offered him insult. That is what I should very much like to talk about!”

“I had thought it might not be necessary,” replied Lord Julius. “At least, I had hoped you would pick up the information for yourself—a harmless little at a time, and guess the rest, and so spare everybody, yourself included. But that is precisely what you seem not to do; and I dare say I was wrong in not talking frankly with you at the start. But let me understand first: what do you know about your father?”

“Only that he was a soldier, a professional soldier. That I have told you,” panted Christian.

“Yes, and a very notable soldier,” responded the other. “He won the Victoria Cross in the Mutiny—the youngest man in all India to do so. That is for you to remember always—in your own mind—for your own pride and consolation.”

“Ah, yes, always!” murmured the son.

“And in other services, too, after he left England,” the elder man went on, “I have understood that he was a loyal and very valuable officer to those he fought for. This also is something for you to be proud of—-but still inside your own mind! That it is necessary to remember—that you must keep it to yourself. Forgive my repeating the injunction.”

“Go on!” said Christian.

“Well,” Lord Julius began, speaking with more hesitation, “Ambrose as a soldier was magnificent, but you know enough from your books to know that splendid soldiers may easily be—how shall I say?—not so splendid in other walks of life. It is to be said for him that he was bare twenty-three—poor boy. It was in 1859; and, as misery would have it, I was in Syria, traveling with my wife. Perhaps if I had been in England, I could have done something. As it was, there was no one to help him; and of course it may be that he couldn’t have been helped. It was a case of a young man returning to London, with honors and flattery enough to turn even an old head, and walking blindfold into the worst company in Europe. I have no intention of going into details. You must take my word for it that suddenly four or five young men of great families fled to the Continent; and that, without much publicity in the papers, there was a very miserable sort of scandal after their flight. Other names were mentioned—but I needn’t go into that. It was to the interest of many influential people to hush the thing up, and to some extent they succeeded. After a while it became even possible for the others to come back to England—there are many ways of managing such matters—but there was one of them who never returned.”

Christian gazed into the old man’s face with mute, piteous fixity of concentration.

“This one, of course,” Lord Julius pursued, picking his words still more cautiously, and liking his task less than ever, “was your father. The way was smoothed for the rest to come back, but not for him—that is, at first. Later, when he could have returned, he would not. Ambrose had a stubborn and bitter temper. He was furious with his father, with his family—with all England. He would touch none of us. Why, I myself went to Sicily many years ago—it was as soon as I had got back from the East—and learned the facts, and found out what could be done; and I tried to see him, and bring him home with me, but he would not speak with me, or even remain under the same roof with me—and so I could do nothing. Or yes, there was one thing—that is to maintain some kind of watch over you—after his death, and that we did. My own idea was to have brought you over to England years ago—as soon as your mother died—but Emanuel thought otherwise.”

He paused here in his narrative, for the reason that his companion was obviously no longer listening to him.

Christian had moved a step or two away, and with a white, set face was looking off over the hill-tops. His profile showed brows knitted and lips being bitten, under the stress of an internal tempest. It seemed to the old man a long time that he stood thus, in dry-eyed, passionate battle with his own mind. Then, with a sudden, decisive gesture he spread out his hands and turned impulsively to Lord Julius.

“You are an old man, and a wise one, and you were my father’s friend and you are my friend!” he said, with trembling earnestness. “I should be a fool not to pay heed to what you tell me. You advise that I do not mention my father more than is necessary. Eh bien, I take your advice. Without doubt it is right—just as it is right that I should speak less of my brother Salvator. I have remembered that since you warned me, and now I will remember this. But I should like”—he came forward as he spoke, still with extended hands, and looked with entreating earnestness up into the other’s face—“I should like to have you understand that Salvator is my brother not any the less, and that I love and honor and have pride in my father more than before. This I keep in my own mind, as you advise—but one thing I will do for every one to take note of. I will write my name always ‘Tower.’”

The great-uncle put a big, comforting hand on his shoulder. “I should not dream of blaming you,” he said, gently. “But there is a man to tell us luncheon is ready.”

He nodded comprehension to the servant who had appeared at the opening in the hedge, and, still with his hand on Christian’s shoulder, began to move in that direction.

“One other matter,” said the young man in lowered tones and hurriedly—“from the hill above, awhile ago, I saw my grandfather—in his chair, on the balcony. You said just now that my father hated him—was furious with him. Did he behave cruelly to my father?”

“Oh, no-o,” replied Julius, with an indefinite upward inflection on the deliberate negative. “Not cruelly.”

“But unjustly?”

“Oh, no, not unjustly, either—if only because he never in his life possessed the dimmest inkling of what justice meant. The duke is my brother, and I know him much better than any one else living, and so I am free to speak frankly about him. He has been a duke nearly eighty years—which is, I believe, unprecedented—but he has been an ass still longer than that.” After a pause he added: “I am going to take you to him this afternoon.”

Christian hung his head as they walked along, and framed in his depressed mind more than one further inquiry about this grandsire of his, who held so august a station, and yet had been dismissed so contemptuously, but they did not translate themselves into speech. Nor, later, during the luncheon, was this great personage more than indirectly alluded to.

The way to this luncheon had led through three or four large rooms, opening one upon the other by small doors, the immediate approaches to which were given the effect of passageways by means of screens. What these apartments were used for, or how the residents of the castle distinguished them apart in their own minds, Christian could not imagine. To his rapid and curious inspection, they seemed all alike—each with its bare, indifferently polished floor, its huge stone fireplace, its wainscoting, walls and ceiling of dark, umber-hued wood, and its scant store of furniture which only heightened the ruling impression of big empty spaces. An occasional portrait was dimly to be discerned up in the duskiness of the oak panels, but the light from the narrow and small-paned windows was too faint to examine them by. More cheerless or apparently useless rooms the young man had never seen.

Lord Julius seemed to guess his thoughts. “This is all an old part—what might be called mid-Plantagenet,” he explained, as they went along. “My father had these rooms pulled about a good deal, and done up according to Georgian standards, but it was time and money wasted. Even if big windows were cut through they would be too dark for comfort, to our notions. The men who made them, of course, cared nothing at all about daylight, at least inside a house. They spent as little time as possible under roofs, to begin with; they rose at daybreak and went to bed at dark. When they were forced to be under cover, they valued security above all things, and the fewer openings there were in the walls, the better they liked it. They did no reading whatever, but after they had gorged themselves with food, sat around the fire and drank as much as they could hold, and listened to the silly rubbish of their professional story-tellers and ballad-singers till they fell asleep. If it happened that they wanted to gamble instead, a handful of rush-lights or a torch on the wall was enough to see the dice by.

“Really, what did they want more? And for that matter, what do most of their lineal descendants want more either? Light enough to enable them to tell a spade from a heart, and perhaps to decipher the label on a bottle now and then. Nothing more. The fashion of the day builds plate-glass windows round them, but it is truly a gross superfluity.” The room in which Lady Cressage and the luncheon-table awaited them was of a more hospitable aspect. A broad expanse of lawn, and of distant trees and sky-line fading away in the sunny autumn haze, made a luminous picture of the high embrasured window stretching almost from corner to corner across one side. By contrast with the other apartments, the light here was brilliant. Christian, with a little apologetic bow and gesture to the others, dallied before the half-dozen portraits on the walls, examined the modeling of the blackened oak panels about them, and lingered in admiring scrutiny of the great carved chimney-piece above the cavernous hearth, on which a fire of logs crackled pleasantly. This chimney-piece was fairly architectural in its dimensions. It was as full of detail, and seemed almost as big, as the west front of a church, and he tipped his head back to look up at its intricate, yet flowing scheme of scrollwork, its heraldic symbolism used now for decoration, now to point the significance, as it were, of the central escutcheon—and all in old wood of so ripe a nut-brown color that one seemed to catch a fragrance exhaled from it.

“That is the best thing here,” said Edith Cressage, moving over to stand beside him. “It came from Ludlow Castle. Those are the arms of the Mortimers. It is the Mortimers, isn’t it?” She turned to Lord Julius for support. “I always confuse them with the De Lacys.”

“Yes, the Mortimers,” answered Julius, as servants entered, and they took their seats. “But almost every other family of the Marches is represented in the devices scattered about. You can see the arrows of the Egertons, the eagles of the Grandisons, and up above, the corbies or ravens of the Corbets, and so on. That was the period when the Marches ruled England, and their great families, all married and intermarried and bolstered up by the feudal structure, were like a nation by themselves. The Mortimers, you know,” he added, turning to Christian, “became practically kings of England. At least they had their grandsons on the throne—but they couldn’t hold it after they had got it. The day of these parts was really over before Bosworth Field. The printing press and Protestantism finished the destruction of its nobility. Only a house here and there has survived among us. Some few of the old names are preserved, like flies in amber, over in Ireland, but I should not know where to look to-day for a De Lacy, or a Tregoz, or a west country Le Strange, let alone a Mortimer. I suppose, in fact, we have more of the Mortimer blood among us than there is anywhere else.”

Christian, seated so that he faced the great armorial pageant spread as a background to the fair head of the lady, smiled wistfully at his companions, but said nothing. The words about his sharing the blood of kings were like some distant, soft music in his ears. He looked at the escutcheons and badges, and sought in a dreamy way to familiarize himself with the fact that they were a part of his own history—that the grandeur they told of was in truth his personal heritage.

There was some talk going on between the others—conversation which, for a time, he scarcely strove to follow. Lord Julius had begun by expressing his joy at the absence from luncheon of the physician whom circumstances kept on the premises, and from this he drifted to an attack upon doctors as a class. He denounced them root and branch, as impostors and parasites, who darkened and embittered human life by fostering all the mean cowardices of smallbrained people, in order that they might secure a dishonest livelihood by pretending to dispel the horrors their own low tricks had conjured up. The robust old gentleman developed these violent theories without heat or any trace of excitement, and even maintained a genial expression of countenance while he spoke. Lady Cressage seemed entertained, and even helped on the diatribe now and again with pertinent quips of her own. But Christian could see very little sense in such an assault upon a respectable profession, and his attention wandered willingly again to the splendid chimney-piece. He resolved to learn all there was to learn of the heraldry and local history embodied in this sumptuous decoration, without delay. But then, on every conceivable side there was so much to learn!

Suddenly he became aware that his thoughts had concentrated themselves on the extraordinary badness of the luncheon he was eating. Here at least was something Caermere could not teach him about—nor, for that matter, as it seemed, all England either. Since his arrival in the country, he reflected, he had not encountered one even tolerable dish. Vegetables and fish half raw, meats tasteless and without sauce or seasoning, bread heavy and sour, coffee unrecognizable, the pastry a thing too ridiculous for words—so his indictment shaped itself. He felt it his duty to argue to himself that quite likely this graceless and repellent diet was the very thing which made the English such physical and temperamental masters of the world, but the effort left him sad. He made a resolution that if ever Caermere were his a certain white-capped Agostino, in Cannes, should be imported forthwith. Then he became conscious again of what was being said at the table.

“If you could only imagine,” Lady Cressage was saying to Lord Julius, “what a boon your coming has been! I had positively almost forgotten what intelligent conversation was like. It seems ages since I last heard ten consecutive words strung together on a thought of any description. Let me see—it was June when you were last down, with Sir Benjamin Alstead; he has been here once since—but in your absence he put on such a pompous ‘eminent-physician’ manner that really I oughtn’t to count him at all—and with that exception, from June to October, civilization has left poor me entirely out of its reckoning. But perhaps”—they had risen now, and there was a certain new frankness, almost confidence of appeal in her glance into his face—“perhaps, as matters have turned, you will come oftener henceforth?”

Lord Julius nodded. “It is quite likely,” he said, and stretched forth his hand significantly to Christian’s shoulder. “But you were going to show him the house—and I suppose I may come along too. There is half an hour before we go to my brother—and our train does not leave Clune till nearly six.”

“You are not going to-day! and he too?” she exclaimed, hurriedly.

The old man nodded again. “We are expected at Emanuel’s to-night,” he answered. Then, as Christian had moved toward the window and seemed beyond hearing, he added, in a smiling aside, “There is one reason for dragging him away that is comical enough. It wouldn’t do for him to dine at Caermere in morning clothes, and so far as I can see he has no others.”

“He could be too tired to dine,” she suggested, quickly, in a confidential murmur. “Or, for that matter, there is a room full of Porlock’s things—I suppose—I suppose poor Cressage’s—would be too big for him. Oh, it’s too dreadful to have him whisked off like this! Can’t you send a telegram instead?”

Her tone was as frank as her speech—and on the instant her glance at his face made keen inquiry whether it had not been too frank.

He smiled in a tolerant, almost amused way. “Oh, he will return all in good time,” he assured her, gently enough. “Caermere will see plenty of him, later on.”

“Yes, but who can tell where I shall be then?” The necessity for speaking in an undertone gave her words an added intensity of feeling. “And it isn’t only him—I had hoped you would be stopping some days at least—for I wanted to speak with you about this very thing. My position here—the uncertainty of everything—is intolerable to bear.” She lifted her head, and turned her direct gaze into his eyes.

“If only you liked me a little better, I could discuss the matter more freely with you.”

“Humbug!” replied Lord Julius, with a geniality which was at least superficially reassuring. “You shouldn’t say such things, much less think them. I can understand your impatience—but it will be possible to straighten out affairs very soon now. I don’t think you will be found to have suffered by the delay.”

“Oh, that is all right,” she answered, almost pettishly. “Everybody assures me of the most magnanimous intentions—but in the meantime”—she checked herself, tossed her head in resentment, apparently, at the tears which had started to her eyes, and forced herself to smile—“in the meantime, you must forgive my tantrums. It is so depressing here—all alone—or worse than alone! I’m really no longer fit to receive anybody. But now”—she raised her voice in an eager simulation of gaiety—“shall the personally conducted tour begin?”

Caermere had been inaccessible to so many generations of sightseers that no formula for its exhibition remained. The party seemed to Christian to wander at haphazard through an interminable succession of rooms, many of them small, some of them what he could only think of as over-large, but all insufficiently lighted, and all suggesting in their meager appointments and somber dejection of aspect a stage of existence well along on the downward path to ruin. He had only to look about him to perceive why Caermere had long ago been removed from the list of England’s show-places. His companions between them kept his attention busy with comments upon the history and purpose of the apartments they passed through, but beyond a general sense of futile and rather shabby immensity he gained very little from the inspection. The mood to postpone comprehension of what he was seeing to another and a more convenient time was upon him, and he almost willfully yielded to it.

Once, when impulse prompted him to climb a little ladder-like staircase, and push open a door from which the black dust fell in a shower, and he discerned in the gloom of the attic chamber piles of armor and ancient weapons, a thrill of fleeting excitement ran through his veins.

“They say that Prince Llewelyn’s armor is there,” called up Lord Julius from the landing below. “Some day we will have it all out, and cleaned and furbished up. But don’t go in now! You’ll get covered with dirt. I used to venture in there and rummage about once in a while when I was a boy,” he added as Christian came down. “But even then one came out black as a sweep.”

There were fine broad stretches of rugged landscape to be seen here and there from narrow casements in the older, higher parts they were now traversing, and occasionally Christian was able to interest himself as well in details of primitive, half-obliterated ornamentation over arches and doorways of early periods, but he was none the less almost glad when they came out at last into a spacious upper hallway, and halted in tacit token that the journey was at an end.

“Now I will leave you,” said the lady, with lifted skirt and a foot poised tentatively over the first step of the broad descending stairs. “I shall have tea in the conservatory when you come down.”

Christian felt that something must be said. “It has all been very wonderful to me,” he assured her. “I am afraid I did not seem very appreciative—but that is because the place is too huge, too vast, to be understood quite at once. And I am so new to it all—you will understand what I mean. But I thank you very much.”

She smiled brightly on him and nodded to them both, and passed down the stairway. Christian was all at once conscious, as his eyes followed her, that there was a novel quickening or fluttering of his heart’s action. For a brief second, the sensation somehow linked itself in his thoughts with the tall, graceful figure receding from him, and he bent forward to grasp more fully the picture she made, moving sedately along, with a hand like a lily on the wide black rail. Then he suddenly became aware that this was an error, and that he was trembling instead because the moment for confronting his grandfather had come.

Lord Julius, indeed, had already opened a massive mahogany door at the right of the stairs, and signaled to him now to follow.