She and Archie had a good time that bright winter day, and tired themselves out completely.  He could pass from the immediate enjoyment of a meal to a snooze on the rug before the fire; but after Bluebell had had some tea, there remained many hours at her disposal before bed-time.  She would have liked to have written a long letter to her mother; but if it must be worded so guardedly, where was the good?  So she flew to her unfailing friend, the piano, and interpreted Schumann and Beethoven to a late hour, while the carpenter and his wife, listening in the kitchen, “wished that the lady would play something with a bit of tune in it, and not be always practising them exercises.”

CHAPTER XXXI.

BROMLEY TOWERS.

  Had yon ever a cousin, Tom’
    And did that cousin happen to sing’
  Sisters we have by the dozen,
    But a cousin’s a different thing
                    —­Hon. Mrs. Norton.

Harry had stayed the night in London, and rather wished, for the present, it might be inferred that he had been there all the time.  It was some distance from Bromley Towers, and quite dusk as he drove through the park.  Snow was on the ground, and still falling slowly, the two roaring fires in the hall, as the doors were thrown open, flung a red light on the holly berries and gigantic bunch of mistletoe suspended from the chandelier, and flickered on dark oil paintings let into the panels.  The footmen were unfamiliar, but the old butler beamed on the young heir he had known from a boy.

Harry shook him heartily by the hand, and asked a dozen questions in a breath.  There was a sprinkling of visitors already in the house, so, shirking the reception rooms, he made straight for a private passage, where in a certain study, he knew he should find his uncle.

Lord Bromley seldom had his large house empty and there were ample means of entertainment for guests, but, like a good general, he had a secure retreat from the perils of boredom in a sacred suite of rooms, to which no one but his nephew had access.  To Harry himself this particular study was invested with a certain amount of solemnity, he had been summoned there on so many notable occasions,—­once to be sentenced to a thrashing from a malevolent tutor who had reported him, afterwards, before going to school, to receive good advice, not unsweetened by a tip.  Cheques had been dealt out there, and his uncle’s views for his future guidance inculcated on him.  Dutton entered now with somewhat of the feelings of a truant schoolboy, for had he not been on shore a month without coming near the place or even writing?

He murmured something about London and business, which the old peer received with the merest elevation of the eyebrows, and was evidently not going to be unpleasant about it.  He knew his nephew was just off a voyage and in possession of a handsome cheque, and was not ill pleased that he should have had his fling, and have done with it before coming down.