He read his brother's letter again, and asked himself whether it was possible to ignore the rudeness of it. After careful consideration he added another paragraph.
"I think, my dear Edmund, that your general charge against me of overriding your wishes and belittling your position at Hayslope can hardly be seriously made. Such an attitude would be very far from my intentions, and I cannot charge my memory with any single instance of my having done so. If I have given you any cause for such an accusation, as I suppose I must have done, or you would not have brought it against me, it can only have been because I have been so occupied with affairs outside Hayslope that I have perhaps treated Hayslope itself as of less importance than it naturally is to you. If so, I apologize. Hayslope still holds the warmest corner in my heart of any place in England, or out of it for that matter. But the world is a large place, and when one is taking a part, however modest, in dealing with the difficulties that it is now involved in, the affairs of one small corner of it do not bulk so large as if one could give all one's attention to them."
He ended resolutely. The intended terseness had already been somewhat whittled away, and it was not his idea to read Edmund a lecture, or he might have read him a much longer one. This would suffice. In the future he might be more closely devoted to the task of putting the world straight again than he was now, and Hayslope would be of still less importance to him. If Edmund had his dignity as Squire of Hayslope so much at heart, it must strike even him that the dignity of a probable Cabinet Minister—so far had Sir William's aspiring thoughts led him in the last few hours—was considerably above it. On reading his letter, he thought that it might have been better to close with the sentence ending, "my having done so," and omit that beginning, "If I have given you any cause." But that would have involved rewriting four whole pages, and the coda was really only a slight fault in the technique of his protest, and not in its intention. So he left the letter as it was, and presently posted it himself.
Lady Eldridge also addressed a letter to Hayslope that afternoon, to her sister-in-law. She usually wrote to her once in the week, and knew that she would want to hear all about the visit to Wellsbury. But she did not begin with that.
"Dearest Cynthia:—I am sorry that Edmund is annoyed about the garden. I am sure you know that neither William nor I would want to do anything at the Grange that he objected to, but I can't help thinking that his putting a veto on it is rather unreasonable. William has telegraphed for the work to be stopped, but I do hope that Edmund doesn't really mean that the garden is not to be made. It would be such a disappointment, for you know what fun we have had in working it all out. William does love Hayslope, and all that he has done at the Grange. Perhaps in the future he may have more work to do, and Hayslope will be more of a recreation to him than ever. So try to get it put right if you can. William thinks so much of Edmund, and I'm sure Edmund does of William too. He can't really want to put such a slight on him as this would be. I think William has shown, by wiring at once for the work to be stopped, that he doesn't want to go against Edmund. I'm not sure, from his letter, that Edmund will even have expected that. If not, do get him to withdraw. I can write this plainly to you, though perhaps William couldn't to Edmund, after his letter. Men are more unreasonable than we are, though they prefer to call it logical. But we can't helping loving them all the same—those that we do love."
Then she went on to tell all about Wellsbury, and gave an amusing account of their visit, full of light descriptive detail of the men and women they had met there, with some descriptions from the inside of a house that was famous throughout the world. But she wrote nothing of what had been said to her about her husband, and gave no hint of anything that might be coming to him.