‘Yes?’ the Countess negligently interjected in a way she had caught from Lady Jocelyn.

‘Cogglesby’s nominee, apparently.’

‘I know it all,’ said the Countess.  ’We need have no apprehension.  He is docile.  My brother-in-law’s brother, you see, is most eccentric.  We can manage him best through this Mr. Raikes, for a personal application would be ruin.  He quite detests our family, and indeed all the aristocracy.’

Melville’s mouth pursed, and he looked very grave.

Sir John remarked:  ‘He seems like a monkey just turned into a man.’

‘And doubtful about the tail,’ added the Countess.

The image was tolerably correct, but other causes were at the bottom of the air worn by John Raikes.  The Countess had obtained an invitation for him, with instructions that he should come early, and he had followed them so implicitly that the curricle was flinging dust on the hedges between Fallow field and Beckley but an hour or two after the chariot of Apollo had mounted the heavens, and Mr. Raikes presented himself at the breakfast table.  Fortunately for him the Countess was there.  After the repast she introduced him to the Duke:  and he bowed to the Duke, and the Duke bowed to him:  and now, to instance the peculiar justness in the mind of Mr. Raikes, he, though he worshipped a coronet and would gladly have recalled the feudal times to a corrupt land, could not help thinking that his bow had beaten the Duke’s and was better.  He would rather not have thought so, for it upset his preconceptions and threatened a revolution in his ideas.  For this reason he followed the Duke, and tried, if possible, to correct, or at least chasten the impressions he had of possessing a glaring advantage over the nobleman.  The Duke’s second notice of him was hardly a nod.  ‘Well!’ Mr. Raikes reflected, ’if this is your Duke, why, egad! for figure and style my friend Harrington beats him hollow.’  And Raikes thought he knew who could conduct a conversation with superior dignity and neatness.  The torchlight of a delusion was extinguished in him, but he did not wander long in that gloomy cavernous darkness of the disenchanted, as many of us do, and as Evan had done, when after a week at Beckley Court he began to examine of what stuff his brilliant father, the great Mel, was composed.  On the contrary, as the light of the Duke dwindled, Raikes gained in lustre.  ‘In fact,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing but the title wanting.’  He was by this time on a level with the Duke in his elastic mind.

Olympus had been held in possession by the Countess about half an hour, when Lady Jocelyn mounted it, quite unconscious that she was scaling a fortified point.  The Countess herself fired off the first gun at her.

’It has been so extremely delightful up alone here, Lady Jocelyn:  to look at everybody below!  I hope many will not intrude on us!’

‘None but the dowagers who have breath to get up,’ replied her ladyship, panting.  ’By the way, Countess, you hardly belong to us yet.  You dance?’