 subtle manifestation of the very
old thing from which he had sprung.
 

                                   Chapter II

                            The Young Sir Willoughby

These little scoundrel imps, who have attained to some respectability as the
dogs and pets of the Comic Spirit, had been curiously attentive three years
earlier, long before the public announcement of his engagement to the beautiful
Miss Durham, on the day of Sir Willoughby's majority, when Mrs. Mountstuart
Jenkinson said her word of him. Mrs. Mountstuart was a lady certain to say the
remembered, if not the right, thing. Again and again was it confirmed on days of
high celebration, days of birth or bridal, how sure she was to hit the mark that
rang the bell; and away her word went over the county: and had she been an
uncharitable woman she could have ruled the county with an iron rod of
caricature, so sharp was her touch. A grain of malice would have sent county
faces and characters awry into the currency. She was wealthy and kindly, and
resembled our mother Nature in her reasonable antipathies to one or two things
which none can defend, and her decided preference of persons that shone in the
sun. Her word sprang out of her. She looked at you, and forth it came: and it
stuck to you, as nothing laboured or literary could have adhered. Her saying of
Lætitia Dale: »Here she comes, with a romantic tale on her eyelashes,« was a
portrait of Lætitia. And that of Vernon Whitford: »He is a Phoebus Apollo turned
fasting friar,« painted the sunken brilliancy of the lean long-walker and
scholar at a stroke.
    Of the young Sir Willoughby, her word was brief; and there was the merit of
it on a day when he was hearing from sunrise to the setting of the moon salutes
in his honour, songs of praise and Ciceronian eulogy. Rich, handsome, courteous,
generous, lord of the Hall, the feast, and the dance, he excited his guests of
both sexes to a holiday of flattery. And, says Mrs. Mountstuart, while grand
phrases were mouthing round about him: »You see he has a leg.«
    That you saw, of course. But after she had spoken you saw much more. Mrs.
Mountstuart said it just as others utter empty nothings, with never a hint of a
stress. Her word was taken up, and very soon, from the extreme end of the long
drawing-room, the circulation of something of Mrs. Mountstuart's was distinctly
perceptible. Lady Patterne sent a little Hebe down, skirting the dancers, for
