The
letters from Waldo's mother would alone have made it memorable.
COUSIN TERESA
Basset Harrowcluff returned to the home of his fathers, after an absence
of four years, distinctly well pleased with himself. He was only thirty-
one, but he had put in some useful service in an out-of-the-way, though
not unimportant, corner of the world. He had quieted a province, kept
open a trade route, enforced the tradition of respect which is worth the
ransom of many kings in out-of-the-way regions, and done the whole
business on rather less expenditure than would be requisite for
organising a charity in the home country. In Whitehall and places where
they think, they doubtless thought well of him. It was not
inconceivable, his father allowed himself to imagine, that Basset's name
might figure in the next list of Honours.
Basset was inclined to be rather contemptuous of his half-brother, Lucas,
whom he found feverishly engrossed in the same medley of elaborate
futilities that had claimed his whole time and energies, such as they
were, four years ago, and almost as far back before that as he could
remember. It was the contempt of the man of action for the man of
activities, and it was probably reciprocated. Lucas was an over-well
nourished individual, some nine years Basset's senior, with a colouring
that would have been accepted as a sign of intensive culture in an
asparagus, but probably meant in this case mere abstention from exercise.
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