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‘It is a fine place,’ said Mr. Bellendean. ‘The places we have known only in youth are apt to look diminished when we come back. I am glad it has not that effect on you. All the same, my dear boy, I am glad it is you and not I that have to live in it. Neither my wife nor I care much for Bellendean.’

At this Norman grasped his father’s hand, and said, ‘You are very good, sir,’ in a way which much perplexed the excellent Colonel, who did not understand wherein the virtue lay, and who was further stricken dumb by the next question. ‘In the confusion and excitement of seeing you again, I believe I have not asked for Mrs. Bellendean?’

The reader is too experienced not to perceive that this question, which bewildered Colonel Hayward, conveyed the not very extraordinary fact that Norman had a step-mother, which was one of the chief reasons of his long absence. Not that Mrs. Bellendean was a harsh or cruel step-mother, or one of those spoilers of domestic peace who flourish in literature under that title; but only that the young man remembered his mother, and could ill bear to see another in her place. She stood on the steps of the great door at this moment, awaiting the carriage—a woman not more than forty, tall and fair, dressed a little more soberly than her age required, but full of youth and animation in look and figure. A number of ladies stood behind her, some of them ’as pretty creatures as ever I saw,’ the Colonel said to himself—cousins of all degrees, old playfellows, old friends. The vieux moustache stood by while these pleasant spectators surged about young Bellendean. He stood aside and made his remarks. ‘I shouldn’t wonder now if he might marry any one of them,’ he said to himself. ‘Lucky fellow. I shouldn’t wonder now if they were all waiting till he throws the handkerchief. Talk about sultans! all those pretty English—no, they are Scotch—girls: and he could have any one of them!’ The Colonel sighed at the thought. He belonged himself to an age in which statistics had no place, before it was known that there was a million or so of superfluous women, and being a chivalrous soul he did not like it. He was much pleased to discover afterwards that several of the young ladies were married, and so out of the competition. But it was a pretty sight.