"Surely these young people must abound with generous instincts," said the earl to himself. "It would be a pity not to develop and encourage them." So he showed them round the garden, which was really a charming little spot, and came to the stable and coach-house last of all. "I have no use for these," said the earl, with a doleful shake of his head. "I am thinking of advertising them as being to let."
"But is not your lordship fond of riding and driving?"
"Yes; no one more so. But then, I am a poor man. Even a hack for riding is a luxury beyond my reach."
A meaning look passed between Cecilia and Slingsby, which the earl's quick eyes did not fail to note.
About a fortnight later the railway people at Brimley advised the earl that a brougham and two horses had arrived at the station, and awaited his orders there. The next post brought a pretty little note from Cecilia, in which she requested, on the part of herself and Mr. Boscombe, the earl's acceptance of a brougham and horse, together with a cob for riding. The earl smiled grimly as he read the note. "Two good children--very," he muttered. "I suppose they intend to make a match of it. I hope they won't regret their generosity when they find out that there is such a person in existence as Clement Fildew Lorrimore, otherwise Lord Shoreham."
Now that his income had been doubled, now that he could afford to keep his brougham, now that his position as chairman of the Brimley Railroad Company, and his seats at the two other boards in London, enabled him to fill up his time with so much pleasure and profit to himself, it might reasonably have been expected that the Earl of Loughton would settle down into the comfortably padded groove in which he found himself, and tempt fortune no more. But such was not the case. There was about him a restlessness of disposition, an uneasy longing for something more than the present could give him, however sunny that present might be. And yet, strange to say, this restlessness and this longing had only developed themselves in him of late. In his old days of poverty all ambition had been crushed out of him by the hopelessness of his condition. The prospect of any change for the better had seemed so infinitesimal that he had long ago made up his mind, with a sort of dogged despair, to live and die, unknowing and unknown, as plain John Fildew, of Hayfield Street, W. C.