Hercules Albert—or Herbert, as he was henceforth to be called—was not a little taken aback by the sudden change in his circumstances, which followed Lady Farrington’s supposed recognition of him. To be measured for a suit of black cloth, which befitted best the Larkins’ notion of gentility; to have a brand new box, painted green, with sundry new shirts, new boots, and a broad-brimmed wide-awake hat, all his own; these were so many delicious surprises, the full effect of which was fully borne in upon him by the openly-expressed envy of the rest of the family. But it was a wrench to him when the time came to leave his home—the only one he had ever known—to lose the companionship of his playmates, and the warm, though roughly-expressed, affection of the sergeant and his wife.

‘Be a man, Herkles,’ the sergeant had said, as the boy stood snivelling at the door of the casemated room, which represented the whole of the Larkins’ establishment. ‘Eat your cake.’ They had provided him with a huge slice of bun-loaf, upon which little Sennacherib Larkins, a freebooter like his Assyrian sponsor, had made many inroads while Herbert’s attention was distracted by the new cares of property and the pangs of making his adieux.

‘Eat your cake, and keep up your heart; me and the missus’ll be over to see you before the month’s out, and we’ll bring Rechab and Senn and Jemimer Ann.’

‘It’s all for your own good, Herbert,’ said Mrs. Larkins. ‘They’re going to make a gentleman of you. You’ll get learning, and Latin, and French mathematics; and by and by you’ll be an officer, perhaps, and live like a lord.’

The prospect was brilliant, but remote. Herbert, as a child of the barracks, had been brought up to believe that officers were almost superior beings. He saw his father, the sergeant, and all soldiers salute them always, and pay them extraordinary deference. When in uniform they were resplendent in crimson and gold; when out of it they drove dog-carts and played cricket and owned dogs, all of which Herbert would have liked to have done too. Yet the off-chance of some day becoming an officer himself did not reconcile him to separation from the best friends he had in the world; and as he left Triggertown casemates, he wept bitterly, and refused to be comforted.

If life looked black and forbidding then, it was a thousand times worse when he got to school. A cross-grained old man—it was Mr. Bellhouse, Lady Farrington’s solicitor—escorted him thither, and snubbed him all the way. The old lawyer was a little sick of her ladyship’s caprices, and considered this last the most serious of all. But it was none of Herbert’s fault, and the poor woe-begone home-sick lad did not deserve to be made to answer for Lady Farrington’s sins. At school he was left stranded, like a waif of the sea upon an unknown shore. Presently the natives, troops of little savage school-boys, swooped down upon him to scalp and torture him. He was pestered with questions, and his hair pulled, his strange wide-awake was jeered at, and given to the winds.

But the instincts of self-defence are strong, and Herbert, if new to school life, was not new to the use of his fists. His tormentors were numerous, but with one or two exceptions were not much older or bigger than himself, and when it came to a question of blows and hard knocks he was physically well able to take care of himself. Presently a ‘straight un’ from the shoulder relieved him of the most troublesome of his assailants, and a second, planted upon the nose of a tall bully, proved that Herbert thought nothing of disparity in height when disposing of his foes. Boys are sensibly affected by the display of pluck, especially against superior odds, and Herbert soon gained for himself the respect due to his prowess, and immunity from further annoyance.

He was vexed and irritated no more, but he went to his bed, a far more cleanly and luxurious couch than that which he had been accustomed to in the crowded casemate at Triggertown, with a sad and sorrowful heart. There are no woes so acute as those of early youth. Happily they are as transient as they are intense. Herbert at night was in the depths of woe; next morning he was already in a fair way to recover his spirits, and before the day was out, in the excitement of the new life opening before him, he had forgotten his sorrows and was as happy as a bird. He was just the boy to get on at school. Brisk and buoyant in disposition, with a well-knit vigorous frame, a predilection for games of every kind in which, with a little experience, he soon excelled, he rapidly advanced in the estimation of his fellows. He was liberal and free-handed too, which did not make him the less appreciated, and he had plenty to give away. ‘His people,’ as boys call their friends, were evidently of the right sort. The old lady with the snow-white hair and large mournful eyes, who came to see him regularly every month, was right royal in her tips, and not to him alone, but to any whom he called particular friends. He got tuck baskets continually and presents of all kinds to which others administered as freely as himself. These are substantial grounds for school popularity, and Herbert enjoyed it in the highest degree.

As he grew in years and developed in strength and good looks, Lady Farrington’s affectionate admiration knew no bounds. She lavished caresses on him without ceasing, declaring that he was daily becoming more and more fitted for the station which would some day be his.

‘Yes, yes, the end cannot be far off now,’ she said one day as she sat in the headmaster’s drawing-room, holding Herbert’s hand in hers and patting it from time to time in the fulness of her contentment. ‘Who shall gainsay your claim when they see you thus, my Herbert’s living image? my son! My son, my lost unhappy son!’ and in a moment she was in a paroxysm of tears.

Herbert was quite accustomed to her now. At first he had been dismayed by her sudden outbursts. The rapid transition from joy to sorrow, from smiles to hysterical tears, were sufficient to frighten him, and when to these were added her wild talk, her bitter self-reproaches, her mysterious hints of his coming greatness, he scarcely knew what to do or say. But by degrees he became familiar with her eccentricities, and he felt that although she might be queer, she was certainly uncommonly kind.

‘I cannot control myself when I think of the miserable past. But, please God, in you I shall make some atonement for my sins, and soon, soon,—for the time draws nigh. You are equal, Herbert, I trust, to a great and arduous trial?’

He was now nearly seventeen, tall and well-built for his age; and as he shook his light curls and looked steadily at her with his clear, honest eyes, he seemed the incarnation of youth and hope.

‘I am game for anything, Lady Farrington, only try me. I’d face the whole world if you asked me.’

‘My own brave boy! The struggle may be sharp, but with such a spirit the victory is certain to be ours.’

‘When may I know what it is that I have to do?’

‘The time draws nigh. It depends only on you and your fitness to play your part. You have not neglected your opportunities I know. Dr. Jiggs gives you a high character. You have profited by his studies, you have learnt to ride and shoot, and when you come to your own you will comport yourself as an English gentleman should.’

‘I am a gentleman born, then?’

‘Of the best,’ she replied proudly. ‘You are—why conceal it longer? Here you have for reasons been still known as Herbert Larkins, my ward, but you are really my grandson, the only child of Herbert, my second boy. You are Sir Herbert Farrington, the rightful heir of the family honours of an old name and wide estates.’

‘Is this certain, quite certain?’

‘Absolutely—at least to me. I have never doubted from the first. My instinct assured me I was right when I recognised you in Triggertown. But as the world needs more material proof I have sought them out, and hold them now all but one. This also I should have possessed had not one person failed me.’

‘Who was that?’

‘Mrs. Larkins. She alone can tell us what we want to know, and she has most unaccountably hesitated or refused to speak. This is why I have broken with her—why I have forbidden them to come and see you again.’

These honest people had paid several visits to Herbert at school, visits he had received with delight. They had ceased suddenly, and he had wondered greatly thereat.

‘But if my mother—if Mrs. Larkins—’

‘Mrs. Larkins is not your mother, Herbert, of that you may rest assured.’

‘She was as good as one to me always, I know that. But if she is the only person who can help us in this matter, was it prudent to break with her altogether?’ Herbert asked very pertinently.

‘I was annoyed, angry, and they were proud—I will seek them out again. They are necessary to us. Mrs. Larkins shall speak, and we will proceed at once to establish your claim. My patience is exhausted and Rupert’s cup is full.’

This conversation occurred at a time mentioned in a previous chapter when her relations with Sir Rupert had become more and more constrained. War had long been imminent between them, but a rupture had been precipitated by the overbearing harshness of his ways. She had spoken, therefore, a little rashly and prematurely perhaps, and in doing so had shown her hand. She had practically thrown down the glove, daring him to do his worst. He accepted the challenge, and acted with a promptitude and determination for which the poor cracked-brained old lady was certainly no match.

His first step was to put a watch upon Lady Farrington’s movements. Mr. Oozenam, the well-known private detective, was employed, who set about his task with his usual skill and despatch. Within a week or two he came with his first report.

‘Lady Farrington goes once every month, often twice, to Deadham School, in Essex. She has done so these five years past and more.’

‘Of course. The cub, her protÉgÉ, is there. Well?’

‘A ward of her ladyship’s, Herbert Larkins, is at school there. He is now seventeen years of age, is tall and well grown, has fair curly hair and greyish blue eyes. Her ladyship is said to take an immense interest in him. Their interviews are long. She must be very liberal to him; the lad is always well provided with money which he spends freely. He is a fair scholar, has been taught especially to ride and shoot, has learnt foreign languages and all extras.’

‘That is enough, Mr. Oozenam. You have handsomely earned your fee.’

‘It has gone very far,’ Sir Rupert said to himself as soon as he was alone. ‘What an idiot I have been not to have observed her more closely! But let us hope it is not too late even now.’

And then, after a long cogitation, he called for his carriage, and driving first into the neighbouring country town, where he made one or two calls, he bade the coachman next proceed to Farrington Court.

He asked for Lady Farrington, and was in due course ushered into her private boudoir.

‘The time has come, Lady Farrington, as you were good enough to say some time back—the time for plain speaking. I mean to put an end to your tomfooleries once for all. So long as they merely made you appear ridiculous I could have borne with you, although you scandalized our name. But I cannot permit you to plot against me and mine without protest and something more.’

‘Plot?’ she asked, in a voice which anger and agitation combined to make nearly inarticulate.

‘I have discovered all. You have kept your secret well, but I have found it out. This base-born pretender—’

‘He is my own grandson. I have the proofs.’

‘They will not bear the test of legal scrutiny, you know that. On the contrary, I can show that the whole affair is a conspiracy from beginning to end. That this Larkins is an adventurer—’

‘You will not harm him, surely? It is I, only I, who am to blame.’

‘I shall hand him over to the police, prosecute him, and make him pay dearly for his attempt to defraud.’

‘You would not dare,’ she cried aghast. Surprise and indignation combined to confuse her mind, and she did not pause to consider that he had no grounds of procedure; that his threats were vain, and could never be put into execution.

‘I shall not spare him nor you.’

‘Then you shall take the consequences. I will proclaim you to be the villain that you are; will tear you from your present exalted station, and will send you back to your former poverty and rags. You shall be dispossessed. You shall disgorge the rents and all that you have improperly acquired. You—’

He merely laughed at her, mockingly and rudely, which exasperated her beyond all bounds.

‘Begone, sir! You shall not remain here another second to insult me. Begone! or—’

He only laughed more loudly and mockingly than before. Instantly her rage passed into fury which seemed uncontrollable.

‘Begone!’ she cried again, snatching up a sharp-pointed paper knife and rushing on him with so much intention that Sir Rupert precipitately retired. She followed him downstairs with a wild shriek, little recking how completely she was playing into his hands.

The butler had just admitted several other visitors, who heard and saw all that passed. Sir Rupert went up to them apparently for protection, but his first words showed that he was eager for more than this.

‘Gentlemen, you have arrived most opportunely. You can see for yourselves. It is clearly not safe to leave her any longer at large.’

The butler had quelled poor Lady Farrington almost instantly, but although he held her back she was still furious and foamed at the mouth.

‘Scarcely. We cannot refuse the certificate,’ said Mr. Burkinshaw, of Bootle, a local magistrate and magnate. ‘Sir Henry quite agrees with me, and the doctors have no manner of doubt. Poor woman, she ought clearly to be put under restraint.’

And she was, without unnecessary delay.

Thus Herbert Larkins lost his protectress just when his fortune seemed close at hand. The cup was dashed away just before he had lifted it to his lips, with consequences which were by no means pleasant to himself, as will be seen in the next chapter.