No doubt this was the secret of the business that took Tyson up to town

so many times that winter. He said nothing to his wife that could account

for his frequent absence, but she believed that he was looking about for

the long-promised flat; and when he remarked casually one morning that he

meant to leave Thorneytoft in the spring she was not surprised. Neither

was Mrs. Wilcox. The flat had appeared rather often in her conversation

of late. Mrs. Wilcox was dimly, fitfully aware of the state of public

opinion; but it did not disturb her in the least. She at once assumed

the smile and the attitude of Hope; she smiled on her son-in-law's

aberrations as she smiled on the ways of the universe at large, and for

the same reason, that the one was about as intelligible as the other. She

went about paying visits, and in the course of conversation gave people

to understand that Mr. Tyson's residence in Drayton had been something of

a concession on his part from the first. So large a land-owner had a

great many tiresome claims and obligations, as well as a position to keep

up in his county; but there could be no doubt that Nevill was quite lost

in the place, and that the true sphere of his activity was town. Mrs.

Wilcox's taste for vague and ample phrases was extremely convenient at

times.

If his wife was the last person to be consulted in Tyson's arrangements,

it may be supposed that no great thought was taken for his son and heir.

Not that the little creature would have been much affected by any change

in his surroundings; he was too profoundly indifferent to the world. It

had taken all the delicious tumult of the spring, all the flaming show of

summer, to move him to a few pitiful smiles. He had none of the healthy

infant's passion and lusty grasp of life; he seemed to touch it as he had

touched his mother's breasts, delicately, tentatively, with some foregone

fastidious sense of its illusion. What little interest he had ever taken

in the thing declined perceptibly with autumn, when he became too deeply

engrossed with the revolutions taking place in his sad little body to

care much for anything that went on outside it.

Hitherto he had not had to suffer from the neglect of servants. He was so

delicate from his birth that his mother had been strongly advised to keep

on the trained nurse till he was a year old. But Mrs. Nevill Tyson knew

better than that. For some reason she had taken a dislike to her trained

nurse; perhaps she was a little bit afraid of the professional severity

which had so often held in check her fits of hysterical passion. Aided by

Mrs. Wilcox and her own intuitions, after rejecting a dozen candidates on

the ground of youth and frivolity, she chose a woman with calm blue eyes

and a manner that inspired confidence. Swinny, engaged at an enormous

salary, had absolute authority in the nursery. And if it had been

possible to entertain a doubt as to this excellent woman's worth, the

fact that she had kept the Tyson baby alive so long was sufficient

testimonial to her capabilities.




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