d relinquished house and furniture to go into eclipse on
the Continent after blazing over London. She strongly recommended the
Continent for a place of restoration, citing his likeness to that animal
the chameleon, in the readiness with which he forgot himself among them
that knew nothing of him. We quitted Bulsted previous to the return of
the family to Riversley. My grandfather lay at the island hotel a month,
and was brought home desperately ill. Lady Edbury happened to cross the
channel with us. She behaved badly, I thought; foolishly, my father said.
She did as much as obliqueness of vision and sharpness of feature could
help her to do to cut him in the presence of her party: and he would not
take nay. It seemed in very bad taste on his part; he explained to me
off-handedly that he insisted upon the exchange of a word or two for the
single purpose of protecting her from calumny. By and by it grew more
explicable to me how witless she had been to give gossip a handle in the
effort to escape it. She sent for him in Paris, but he did not pay the
visit.

My grandfather and I never saw one another again. He had news of me from
various quarters, and I of him from one; I was leading a life in marked
contrast from the homely Riversley circle of days: and this likewise was
set in the count of charges against my father. Our Continental pilgrimage
ended in a course of riotousness that he did not participate in, and was
entirely innocent of, but was held accountable for, because he had been
judged a sinner.

'I am ordered to say,' Janet wrote, scrupulously obeying the order, 'that
if you will leave Paris and come home, and not delay in doing it, your
grandfather will receive you on the same footing as heretofore.'

As heretofore! in a letter from a young woman supposed to nourish a
softness!

I could not leave my father in Paris, alone; I dared not bring him to
London. In wrath at what I remembered, I replied that I was willing to
return to Riversley if my father should find a welcome as well.

Janet sent a few dry lines to summon me over in April, a pleasant month
on heath-lands when the Southwest sweeps them. The squire was dead. I
dropped my father at Bulsted. I could have sworn to the terms of the
Will; Mr. Burgin had little to teach me. Janet was the heiress; three
thousand pounds per annum fell to the lot of Harry Lepel Richmond, to be
paid out of the estate, and pass in reversion to his children, or to
Janet's shou