"I will not hear you, Hampstead; not a word. You can persuade your father, I dare say, but you cannot persuade me. Fanny has divorced herself from my heart for ever."
"I am sorry for that."
"And I'm bound to say that you are doing the same. It is better in some cases to be plain."
"Oh—certainly; but not to be irrational."
"I am not irrational, and it is most improper for you to speak to me in that way."
"Well, good-bye. I have no doubt it will come right some of these days," said Hampstead, as he took his leave. Then he carried his sister off to Hendon.
Previous to this there had been a great deal of unpleasantness in the house. From the moment in which Lady Kingsbury had heard that her stepdaughter was to go to her brother she had refused even to speak to the unfortunate girl. As far as it was possible she put her husband also into Coventry. She held daily consultations with Mr. Greenwood, and spent most of her hours in embracing, coddling, and spoiling those three unfortunate young noblemen who were being so cruelly injured by their brother and sister. One of her keenest pangs was in seeing how boisterously the three bairns romped with "Jack" even after she had dismissed him from her own good graces as utterly unworthy of her regard. That night he positively brought Lord Gregory down into the drawing-room in his night-shirt, having dragged the little urchin out of his cot,—as one might do who was on peculiar terms of friendship with the mother. Lord Gregory was in Elysium, but the mother tore the child from the sinner's arms, and carried him back in anger to the nursery.
"Nothing does children so much good as disturbing them in their sleep," said Lord Hampstead, turning to his father; but the anger of the Marchioness was too serious a thing to allow of a joke.
"From this time forth for evermore she is no child of mine," said Lady Kingsbury the next morning to her husband, as soon as the carriage had taken the two sinners away from the door.
"It is very wrong to say that. She is your child, and must be your child."