“I think it well, Rupert,” he said, after walking for some time in silence, “to prepare you for what, if you have not guessed already, you will be told ere long.  Madam will no doubt herself inform you of it; and it is as well, my lad, that you should be prepared, for you might in your surprise say something hasty, and so cause a breach which it would take long to heal.”

Rupert looked in astonishment at his grandfather.  He had not the most remote idea of what was coming.

“You have doubtless noticed,” Colonel Holliday went on, “the frequency of Sir William Brownlow’s visits here?”

“Yes, sir, I have noticed that, but I do not often see him.  I keep out of his way, for in truth I like him not, nor that son of his, who, on the strength of his three years’ seniority, looks down upon me, and gives himself as many airs as madam my mother’s peacock.”

“And you have never even thought why he comes here so frequently?”

“No, sir,” Rupert said, surprised; “it was no business of mine, and I gave no single thought to it.”

“He is a suitor for your lady mother’s hand,” Colonel Holliday said, gravely.

“What!” almost shouted Rupert; “What, sir!  He, with his sneering face, dares to think—­”

“My dear boy, he not only dares to think, but madam approves of the thought, and has promised him her hand.”

Rupert stood motionless.

“It shall not be,” he burst out.  “We must stop it, sir.  Why do not you?”

“I have no shadow of authority over Mistress Holliday,” the old colonel said.  “As far as I could go, for your sake I have gone—­farther, perhaps, than was wise.  It has been a great blow for me, Rupert.  I had hoped that in the time to come you would be master of the Chace, and of all the broad acres I owned when young; now it will never be.  This house and the home farm are mine, and will be yours, lad; but the outlying land will never come back to the Chace again, but will go to swell the Haugh estate on the other side.  My lady can leave it as she likes.  I have begged her to have it settled upon you, but she has declined.  She may have another family, and, infatuated as she is with her suitor, she is more likely to leave it to them than to you, especially as I fear that you will not take kindly to the new arrangement.”

“I will not submit to it, sir; I will not have it.  I will insult him, and force him to fight me,” the lad gasped, his face white with passion.

“No, Rupert, it won’t do, lad.  Were you four or five years older you might interfere; now he would laugh at you for a headstrong boy.  You would gain his hate, and forfeit your mother’s favour utterly.  It was because I feared an outbreak like this that I told you today what you will in a few hours learn from her.”

“What is to be done?” Rupert said, despairingly.

“Nothing, my boy.  At her marriage, your mother will of course live at the Haugh with Sir William.  This house is mine, and if you cannot get on at the Haugh, it will be always open to you.”