Dynevor Terrace, vol 1 | Page 8

a look nearly approaching a smile,
'you are the last person I ought to invite, if I wish to keep your nephew
unspoiled.'
'I wish there were any one else to spoil him!'
'For his sake, then, come and make Ormersfield cheerful. It will be far
better for him.'
'And for you, to see more of Jem,' she added. 'If he were yours, what
would you say to such hours?'
The last words were aimed at a young man who came briskly into the
room, and as he kissed her, and shook hands with the Earl, answered in
a quick, bright tone, 'Shocking, aye. All owing to sitting up till one!'
'Reading?' said the Earl.
'Reading,' he answered, with a sort of laughing satisfaction in dashing
aside the approval expressed in the query, 'but not quite as you suppose.
See here,' as he held up maliciously a railway novel.
'I am afraid I know where it came from,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Exactly so,' said James. 'It was Fitzjocelyn's desertion of it that excited
my curiosity.'
'Indeed. I should have thought his desertions far too common to excite
any curiosity.'
'By no means. He always has a reason.'
'A plausible one.'
'More than plausible,' cried James, excitement sparkling in his vivid
black eyes. 'It happens that this is the very book that you would most
rejoice to see distasteful to him--low morality, false principles, morbid
excitement, not a line that ought to please a healthy mind.'--
'Yet it has interest enough for you.'
'I am not Fitzjocelyn.'
'You know how to plead for him.'
'I speak simple truth,' bluntly answered James, running his hand
through his black hair, to the ruin of the morning smoothness, so that it,
as well as the whole of his quick, dark countenance seemed to have
undergone a change from sunny south to stormy north in the few
moments since his first appearance.
After a short silence, Lord Ormersfield turned to him, saying 'I have
been begging a favour of my aunt, and I have another to ask of you,'

and repeating his explanation, begged him to undertake the tutorship of
his son.
'I shall not be at liberty at Easter,' said James, 'I have all but undertaken
some men at Oxford.'
'Oh, my dear Jem!' exclaimed the old lady, 'is that settled beyond
alteration?'
'I'm not going to throw them over.'
'Then I shall hope for you at Midsummer,' said the Earl.
'We shall see how things stand,' he returned, ungraciously.
'I shall write to you,' said Lord Ormersfield, still undaunted, and soon
after taking his leave.
'Cool!' cried James, as soon as he was gone. 'To expect you to give up
your school at his beck, to come and keep house for him as long as it
may suit him!'
'Nay, Jem, he knew how few boys I have, and that I intended to give
them up. You don't mean to refuse Louis?' she said, imploringly.
'I shall certainly not take him at Easter. It would be a mere farce
intended to compensate to us for giving up the school, and I'll not lend
myself to it while I can have real work.'
'At Midsummer, then. You know he will never let Louis spend a long
vacation without a tutor.'
'I hate to be at Ormersfield,' proceeded James, vehemently, 'to see
Fitzjocelyn browbeaten and contradicted every moment, and myself set
up for a model. I may steal a horse, while he may not look over the wall!
Did you observe the inconsistency?--angry with the poor fellow first
for having the book, and then for not reading the whole, while it
became amiable and praiseworthy in me to burn out a candle over it!'
'Ah! that was my concern. I tell him he would sing another note if you
were his son.'
'I'd soon make him! I would not stand what Louis does. The more he is
set down and sneered at, the more debonnaire he looks, till I could rave
at him for taking it so easily.'
'I hoped you might have hindered them from fretting each other, as they
do so often.'
'I should only be a fresh element of discord, while his lordship will
persist in making me his pattern young man. It makes me hate myself,
especially as Louis is such an unaccountable fellow that he won't.'

'I am sorry you dislike the plan so much.'
'Do you mean that you wish for it, grandmamma? cried he, turning full
round on her with an air of extreme amazement. 'If you do, there's an
end of it; but I thought you valued nothing more than an independent
home.'
'Nor would I give it up on any account,' said she. 'I do not imagine this
could possibly last for more than a few months, or