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Between the teachings of the highly educated and very accomplished lady, and those of the ignorant untutored groom, young Anthony Calderton received an ineradicable impression that if the Devil and Oliver Cromwell were not one and the same person, they must be sufficiently similar in evil nature and evil-doing to be indistinguishable; and if they were indeed separate and distinct, Oliver Cromwell was the worse character of the two.

"Was Oliver Cromwell the Devil in human form, do you suppose, Houlihan?" he asked one day, when the groom called down the curse of Cromwell upon his horse which had pecked and stumbled.

"He was that," was the reply. "Indade an' he was. An' whoilst Oliver Cromwell was trampling the green grass of Oireland and turnin' it black beneath his cloven hooves, Hell had no master."

And so in fear and in hatred of the coarse and cruel face that disfigured the drawing-room, the boy grew; hatred increasing, if that were possible, as fear decreased, if decrease it did. And even up to the time when the slightly unbalanced Miss Stuart took her departure, her duty done; and the savagely vindictive old groom finished his long course, galloped into the straight, and passed the winning-post where even Cromwells cease from troubling and the weary are at rest, Anthony Calderton exhibited, from time to time, signs of the kink, the complex, with which these two people so different, so mutually antagonistic, had independently and unintentionally united to afflict him.