It would have been horrible had Maude fallen in love with the wrong brother, and the old lady grew to hate him for the fear, as well as on her own score.

The feeling of dislike, begun in Val's childhood, had ripened in the last month or two to almost open warfare.

He was always in the way.

Many a time when Lord Hartledon might have enjoyed a _tete-a-tete_ with Maude, Val Elster was there to spoil it.
But the culminating point had arrived one day, when Val, half laughingly, half seriously, told the dowager, who had been provoking him almost beyond endurance, that she might spare her angling in regard to Maude, for Hartledon would never bite.

But that he took his pleasant face beyond her reach, it might have suffered, for her fingers were held out alarmingly.
From that time she took another little scheme into her hands--that of getting Percival Elster out of his brother's favour and his brother's house.