Our mother had certainly heard rumours of severity, but he had regarded her maternal anxiety as excessive, etc., etc.

In short, my dear father saw that he had been wrong, and confessed it, and was now as ready as the Colonel to expose Snuffy's misdeeds.
No elaborate investigation was needed.

An attack once made on Mr.
Crayshaw's hollow reputation, it cracked on every side; first hints crept out, then scandals flew.

The Colonel gave no quarter, and he did not limit his interest to his own nephew.
"A widow's son, ma'am," so he said to my mother, bowing over her hand as he led her in to dinner, in a style to which we were quite unaccustomed; "a widow's son, ma'am, should find a father in every honest man who can assist him." The tide having turned against Snuffy, his friends (of the Driver and Quills type) turned with it.

But they gained nothing, for one morning he got up as early as we had done, and ran away, and I never heard of him again.