when I offered this miserable foreign adventurer five hundred pounds to give it up, he must send me an insulting message.”
“It was only a quiet letter, my dear,” said Lady Pinemount, “to say that he had taken a fancy to the place, and preferred to keep it.”
“You mind your own business,” said his lordship, his florid face growing slightly apoplectic of aspect. “I’m not blind. But I won’t have it. You write and ask the Elsgraves here; and you, Denis, recollect that I expect you to be civil to Hilda Elsgrave. The Earl and I quite understand each other about that.”
“If you expect me to begin paying attentions to a girl whom I dislike, and who dislikes me, sir,” said the young man firmly, “I’m afraid you will be disappointed.”
“No, sir: look here – ”
“Edward, my love – ”
“Hold – your – tongue. I’m master while I live, and I’ll have my way. You, Denis, you’ve got to marry Hilda; and if I hear of your hanging about the Sandleighs again, and talking to that half-bred Spanish hussy – ”
“Look here, father: when you insult Miss Salado, you insult me.”
“Silence, sir!” roared his lordship. “Listen to what I say. Insult you! Puppy! How dare you! The father’s an adventurer, and you’re mad after a big-eyed adventuress.”
“She is a lady, sir.”
“Silence! And as for you, Lady Pinemount, you must have been mad to call upon them. That was the beginning of the mischief.”
“Miss Salado is a very sweet, refined girl, Edward,” said her ladyship quietly, “and it was a social duty to call.”
“Then you’ve done your duty, and there’s an end of it. I won’t have it, and I won’t have the fellow staring over into my park. Coming and sticking himself there! Won’t sell the place again, won’t he? Never another inch of timber or head of beasts does that auctioneer sell for me.”
The Honourable Denis Rolleston was about to speak, but a meaning look from handsome, dignified Lady Pinemount silenced him, and the angry head of the family rose from his half finished lunch and paced the room.
“Taken a fancy to the place, has he? I’ll make him take a fancy to go. The sooner he’s out of Lescombe the better. Like to buy the manor, perhaps? But I’ll make it too hot for him. And you, Denis, understand me at once. I can’t interfere about the title; but look here, sir, you marry as I wish you to, – keep up the dignity of our family tree. You are the head, sir, but if you don’t do as I tell you, sir, not a penny do you have to support the title, for I’ll disinherit you. Yes, sir, you think you’re a devilish fine branch, no doubt, but damme, I’ll saw you off!”
As his lordship spoke, he bounced out of the dining-room, banged the door, and directly after mother and son saw him going straight across the fields to inspect the hoarding he had ordered to be put up.
“I am very sorry, Denis, my dear,” said Lady Pinemount.
“Can’t be helped, mother dear,” said the young man, passing his arm round her and walking up towards the window, where they stood watching his lordship’s diminishing figure. “I want to be a good son, and I never kick against the dad’s eccentricities, except when they are too bad. That is such a petty, ungentlemanly trick – an insult to as fine a fellow as ever breathed, and – ”
“You do love Veronica, my boy?” said Lady Pinemount, gazing wistfully at her son.
“Love her?” said the young man, with his frank, handsome English face lighting. “Mother dear, could I pick out a sweeter wife?”
Lady Pinemount sighed, and kissed her son.
Volume One – Chapter Three.
How the Doctor Hit
“Down again, Very!” cried the Doctor, a week later, as he came in from a botanical ramble to breakfast. “Why, eh? – yes – no: it has been burned.”
“Yes, papa: didn’t you see the flames?”
“Not I. Slept like a top, and I went out through the sandpits and among the fir trees this morning.”
He hurried out of the French window, and out into the road, and looked over the hedge into the park and then returned.
“Seems to have been splashed with petroleum or paraffin. Twice cut down, and once burned. Well, somebody else does not like the hoarding.”
“But, papa, you gave orders for it to be destroyed!”
“I? Hang it all, Very, am I the sort of man to do such a shabby thing?”
“No, papa: I beg your pardon.”
“Granted, pet. Some one in the village thinks it’s a paltry thing to do, and has constituted himself our champion. Confound his insolence! What did he say in his letter?”
“That if you dared to destroy his property, he would prosecute you, papa,” said Veronica.
“Yes, and he has sent me a summons.”
“Oh, papa!”
“Fact, my dear; and I shall be puzzled as to how to defend myself and prove my innocency. I say, Very, my dear, this looks bad for you.”
The girl sighed, and bent over her cup.
“Wouldn’t be a pleasant alliance, my dear, even if it could come off,” continued the Doctor, watching his child furtively. “Ah, dear me! how strangely things do work! Who’d have thought, when we landed in England, that there was the heir to a baron bold waiting to go down on bended knee to my little tyrant, and make her an offer of his heart and hand?”
“Oh, papa, how you do delight in teasing me!”
“Teasing you? Well, isn’t it a fact? You shot him through and through first time we were at church, and your victim has been our humble servant ever since.”
“But, papa, do you think Thomas could have destroyed the hoarding?”
“Well, I don’t know, my dear. He was very indignant about it, and said if this was his place he would soon down with the obstruction.”
“Then it must have been he. You ought to scold him well.”
“What, for getting rid of a nuisance?”
“No: for getting you into such trouble with Lord Pinemount.”
“Hah!” said the Doctor dreamily; “it’s a strange world, Very. Perhaps we had better go back to Iquique.”
“Oh, papa!” cried the girl in dismay.
“Don’t you want to go?”
“What, leave this lovely place, where it is always green, and the flowers are everywhere, for that dreadful dry desert place where one is parched to death? Ah, no, no, no!”
“Humph!” said the Doctor – “always green. Don’t seem so, Very: something, to my mind, is getting ripe at a tremendous rate.”
