'No. My father left his birthplace with a parent's curse ringing in his ears.'
'Shocking, shocking!' said the squire.
'You know nay mother,' continued Eustace, 'scarcely outlived my birth.'
'Poor Eu! Poor girl!' sighed the squire.
'At that time my father, as he afterwards told me, broken down with grief, wrote to Sir Eustace, entreating a reconciliation and a revocation of his curse.'
'I'll answer for it, my father never had that letter. I know he was hard, but he could not have stood that.'
'An answer came to it, written by Bloodworth, who complained bitterly of being made the medium of so painful a message. It was to the effect that Sir Eustace would pardon and receive him upon condition of his marrying again immediately, according to his choice; and it was couched in such arbitrary terms, so devoid of all natural feeling, so insulting to my mother's memory, and casting such unworthy reflections on my father's motive for making the advance, that he spurned the thought of replying to it. In that letter, too, Bloodworth confirmed what he had often insinuated in his former letters—that his brothers had helped to embitter the mind of Sir Eustace against him.'
'Oh, my dear sir,' said the doctor, laying his hand on Mr. Brimble, 'what is the use of chafing so? Pray, pray be pacified!'
The squire leant back in his chair in silence.
'I must tell you, my dear uncle, that my father did not believe it of you,—you were then about seventeen or eighteen,—and he could not credit that selfish interest could so have altered your heart, full of affection as he had left it, in the very bloom of youth. But, you excepted, he determined to forget all England and devote himself to me. My mother's slender fortune, and an estate to which he became entitled when of age'—