The family, she reflected with relief, was not a
large one; the two daughters were married and away, there was only old
Mrs. Bludward and her son Robert at home. Mrs. Bludward was something of
an invalid, and Robert was a young man who had been at Oxford and was
going into Parliament. Further than that Alethia's information did not
go; her imagination, founded on her extensive knowledge of the people one
met in novels, had to supply the gaps. The mother was not difficult to
place; she would either be an ultra-amiable old lady, bearing her feeble
health with uncomplaining fortitude, and having a kind word for the
gardener's boy and a sunny smile for the chance visitor, or else she
would be cold and peevish, with eyes that pierced you like a gimlet, and
a unreasoning idolatry of her son. Alethia's imagination rather inclined
her to the latter view. Robert was more of a problem. There were three
dominant types of manhood to be taken into consideration in working out
his classification; there was Hugo, who was strong, good, and beautiful,
a rare type and not very often met with; there was Sir Jasper, who was
utterly vile and absolutely unscrupulous, and there was Nevil, who was
not really bad at heart, but had a weak mouth and usually required the
life-work of two good women to keep him from ultimate disaster.
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