"They tell me he is not strong, and I don't suppose they'll let him come out such weather as this. You'll have to wait. I don't think any body ought to stir out in this weather. It doesn't suit me, I know. Such an abominable place as it is I never saw in my life. There is not a room in the house that is not enough to make a man blow his brains out."
Lady Sarah could not stand this, nor did she think it right to put up with the insolence of his manner generally. "If so," she said, "it is a pity that you came away from Italy."
He turned sharply round and looked at her for an instant before he answered. And as he did so she remembered the peculiar tyranny of his eyes,—the tyranny to which, when a boy, he had ever endeavoured to make her subject, and all others around him. Others had become subject because he was the Lord Popenjoy of the day, and would be the future Marquis; but she, though recognising his right to be first in every thing, had ever rebelled against his usurpation of unauthorized power. He, too, remembered all this, and almost snarled at her with his eyes. "I suppose I might stay if I liked, or come back if I liked, without asking you," he said.
"Certainly."
"But you are the same as ever you were."
"Oh, Brotherton," said the Marchioness, "do not quarrel with us directly you have come back."
"You may be quite sure, mother, that I shall not take the trouble to quarrel with any one. It takes two for that work. If I wanted to quarrel with her or you, I have cause enough."
"I know of none," said Lady Sarah.
"I explained to you my wishes about this house, and you disregarded them altogether." The old lady looked up at her eldest daughter as though to say, "There,—that was your sin." "I knew what was better for you and better for me. It is impossible that there should be pleasant intercourse between you and my wife, and I recommended you to go elsewhere. If you had done so I would have taken care that you were comfortable." Again the Marchioness looked at Lady Sarah with bitter reproaches in her eyes.
"What interest in life would we have had in a distant home?" said Lady Sarah.