There was a tiny prick in each of his speeches. The Squire was made more uncomfortable by them than was due even from the general discomfort of the situation.
He raised troubled eyes to those of his questioner. "I suppose you are not ignorant," he said, "of what is being said of us?"
"Of 'us'?" queried Lord Cheviot.
"Of me and my family. All the world seems to be talking of us."
Lord Cheviot dropped his eyes. He may not have liked to be put into the position of questioned, instead of questioner.
"I am not ignorant of it," he said.
"It was for him," said the Squire, "to come or to keep away. As long as my name was being bandied about in the wicked way it has been, I would not ask him to my house. I have my pride, Lord Cheviot. If your nephew marries my daughter, he marries her as an equal. My family has been before the world as long as his, or your lordship's. It has not reached the distinction, of late, of either; but that is a personal matter. If Lord Inverell takes a bride from Kencote he takes her from a house where men as high in the world as he have taken brides for many generations past."
Dick, if he had heard this speech, might have been relieved of his fear that the Squire would be overawed by the Cabinet Minister. He might also have felt that as an assertion of dignity it would have been more effective if postponed to a point in the conversation when that dignity should have been affronted.
"If that were not so, Mr. Clinton," said Lord Cheviot, "I should not have done myself the honour of seeking an interview with you. Let us come to the point—as equals—and as men of honour. You have said that your name is being bandied about in a wicked way. I take that to mean that accusations are being made which have no truth in them."
"Many accusations are being made," said the Squire, "which have no word of truth in them. They will not be believed by anybody who knows me—who knows where I stand. But mud sticks. Many people do not know me—most people, I may say, who have heard these stories; for they have spread everywhere. I stand as a mark. I shelter myself behind nobody; I draw in nobody, if I can help it. That is why I asked your nephew to put off his visit to my house, and why I have not renewed it since."