has left them only during my life. Mr. Hector yonder"—he pointed with his stick to the portrait of the old squire—"his grandfather, very rightly was incensed with his son, Walter, for taking up with liberal views in politics, and for being bitten with advanced church opinions, such as were promulgated by the Oxford tract writers. Young fools at the time were up in the clouds with all sorts of inflated notions. Mr. Hector, the old squire, was furious with his son. As Walter would not abandon his opinions, the old man washed his hands of him, would not speak to him or admit him over his doorstep. He left the estate to me, his second wife's son by her former marriage, for my life, to revert to the Beaudessarts only after my decease and that of his son Walter, who, he protested, should be excluded entirely from the property."
"Really, papa, I think that Walter was very hardly treated. Young men are hot-headed and enthusiastic, but they cool down as they grow older."
"I do not see that he was hardly treated. I do not see it at all. It is I, or you, who meet with unfair treatment. If I had been so happy as to have had a son of my own, would I not have desired to transmit Pendabury to him? Is it not a monstrous injustice that I should be debarred from so doing? And you. I should have liked to constitute you heiress, so that, on your marriage, you would have carried this place to your husband. But it cannot be. This Beaudessart cub intervenes. When I depart this life you will have to pack your portmanteaus and turn out. It is atrocious, inhuman, unchristian."
"But, papa, it is we who are the interlopers. It is the Beaudessarts who have been unjustly treated."
"Interlopers! Oh, you think that jackanapes is defrauded of his rights by your own father? Is that an opinion a child of mine dares to entertain? There is filial respect, indeed! There is reverence for my grey hairs! Is contrariety a thing bred in these walls? Does a curse rest on Pendabury, that the child there should rise up and call its parent opprobrious names?"
"Oh, papa, I never did that! If any wrong were committed, it was not by you, but by the old Squire Hector. However, let all that be—I really know nothing of the particulars except what you have divulged. But do consider in what a painful, humiliating position I was placed by your speaking to the young Mr. Beaudessart as you did, and practically turning him out of the house."
"It was due to your own thoughtlessness."
"I knew nothing of what you have now told me; if I had I would have hesitated about asking him in."
"But he was aware, and should not have taken advantage of your ignorance. Enough of this—pour me out some tea. Ha, shrimps! Tea is the only meal at which I care for them, and then—if fresh—I love them."
Chapter 3
AN ORANGE ENVELOPE
Sibylla came singing into the dining-room in bounding spirits.
"Oh, I am hungry! So glad there is cold beef. I must have some beer. I cannot stand your tea slops after a hard day. Papa, congratulate me! I have had the most splendid day in my life; a day to be marked with white chalk, a day never to be forgotten."
Then ensued an account of how she was in at the finish, with its concomitants.
"There were but five at the last," she added. "Joan dropped out very early over some scruple about Ruby. Bless me, Joan, why did you look? If you had not seen the raw, you might have gone on with a safe conscience. Do not pry, and seek to discover what is best not known. Take it for granted that all is well, till you have the contrary forced upon you. That is my doctrine and philosophy."
"Prying—exactly!" said Mr. Frobisher, looking up from his shrimps. "We have had an exemplification of prying here, that I have very properly exposed. Joan, did that cub happen to ask the sizes of the several rooms, so as to enable him to provide carpets? and the height of the windows for the furnishing of curtains?"
"Papa," answered Miss Frobisher, with pain in her face and in her tone, "I take the entire blame upon myself, as I have already assured you; he was most reluctant to intrude, but I insisted. I put it in such a way as to leave him no option but to come here. Sibyll is my witness. Even had I known that he was the man to whom Pendabury must eventually fall, I do not think that such knowledge would have weighed heavily with me. Usually the heir to an estate is not kept at a distance from it, and treated as an enemy by him who is in present enjoyment. If that were the usual condition of affairs, a father would be invariably at daggers drawn with his eldest son."
"Joan, the circumstances in this case are peculiar."
"I know no more of them than what I have just been told. I daresay that I have judged hastily from insufficient acquaintance with the particulars. Let this pass, papa. I had no intention of causing you annoyance, I can well assure you; and no one can regret more than I do that this contretemps has occurred."
"What is all this ruction about?" asked Sibylla, and then, without waiting for an answer, which, a she saw, neither was disposed to give, she went on, "Papa, Joan, who are coming to dinner to-night?"
"The rector and Mrs. Barker, and the young lady who is staying at Westholt—I forget her name—Colonel Wood, and Mr. Prendergast."
"Let me see," said the younger girl. "Papa takes in mother Frump; you are led by the rector; Colonel Wood gives his arm to Miss Somebody or other; and I am consigned to Jack Prendergast, the rector's pupil. Thank you. I shall have a headache and not appear."
"But, Sibyll, you must."
"A lively dinner for me, indeed, with that hobble-de-hoy, who can talk of nothing but his dog, and whose notions of sport rise no higher than ratting. Last time I sat by him he took my appetite away, because he would talk of his dog's distemper—and diagnose the disorder minutely. I am tired through hunting; I shall not come down."
"But, Sibyll, indeed you must remember what is due to our guests."
"Other people may be ill when they please, why not I?"
"But, remember, you are the heroine of this day."
"Ah, I forgot! Yes; I shall be down. I'll open Jack Prendergast's dull eyes. Why does he not come out?"
"He has not got a horse."
"But he should have one."
"I suppose he or his father cannot afford it."
"Then I do not see that we have any call to show him civility. A man who does not keep his hunter should know that his level is not ours."
"My dear Sibyll, it is not a note of gentility to have a well-stuffed purse. A man may be nice and yet poor."
"But he is not nice at all. He is not worth the trouble of talking to."
"If he had a horse, he would yarn about that; as he has only a dog, that interests him, and it is your duty to condescend to him, and maintain a doggy conversation."
"I will not trouble myself to discuss what does not interest me, and with a fellow so dull. He is reading with Mr. Barker for the university, and is safe to be plucked. He will disappear and subside into some business or other, and we shall happily see him no more."
The butler entered with a salver, and presented to the squire
