“Mordaunt Court!” cried Clarence; “do you mean to say that Mr. Mordaunt has lost that property?”
“Why, sir, one Mr. Mordaunt has lost it, and another has gained it: but the real Mr. Mordaunt has not an acre in this county or elsewhere, I fear, poor gentleman. He is universally regretted, for he was very good and very generous, though they say he was also mighty proud and reserved; but for my part I never perceived it. If one is not proud one’s self, Mr. Linden, one is very little apt to be hurt by pride in other people.”
“And where is Mr. Algernon Mordaunt?” asked Clarence, as he recalled his interview with that person, and the interest with which Algernon then inspired him.
“That, sir, is more than any of us can say. He has disappeared altogether. Some declare that he has gone abroad, others that he is living in Wales in the greatest poverty. However, wherever he is, I am sure that he cannot be rich; for the lawsuit quite ruined him, and the young lady he married had not a farthing.”
“Poor Mordaunt!” said Clarence, musingly.
“I think, sir, that the squire would not be best pleased if he heard you pity him. I don’t know why, but he certainly looked, walked, and moved like one whom you felt it very hard to pity. But I am thinking that it is a great shame that the general should not do anything for Mr. Mordaunt’s wife, for she was his own flesh and blood; and I am sure he had no cause to be angry at her marrying a gentleman of such old family as Mr. Mordaunt. I am a great stickler for birth, sir; I learned that from the late Lady W. ‘Brown,’ she said, and I shall never forget her ladyship’s air when she did say it, ‘Brown, respect your superiors, and never fall into the hands of the republicans and atheists’!”
“And why,” said Clarence, who was much interested in Mordaunt’s fate, “did General St. Leger withhold his consent?”
“That we don’t exactly know, sir; but some say that Mr. Mordaunt was very high and proud with the general, and the general was to the full as fond of his purse as Mr. Mordaunt could be of his pedigree; and so, I suppose, one pride clashed against the other, and made a quarrel between them.”
“Would not the general, then, relent after the marriage?”
“Oh! no, sir; for it was a runaway affair. Miss Diana St. Leger, his sister, was as hot as ginger upon it, and fretted and worried the poor general, who was never of the mildest, about the match, till at last he forbade the poor young lady’s very name to be mentioned. And when Miss Diana died about two years ago, he suddenly introduced a tawny sort of cretur, whom they call a mulatto or creole, or some such thing, into the house; and it seems that he has had several children by her, whom he never durst own during Miss Diana’s life, but whom he now declares to be his heirs. Well, they rule him with a rod of iron, and suck him as dry as an orange. They are a bad, griping set, all of them; and, I am sure, I don’t say so from any selfish feeling, Mr. Linden, though they have forbid me the house, and called me, to my very face, an old cheating Jew. Think of that, sir!—I, whom the late Lady W. in her exceeding friendship used to call ‘honest Brown,’—I whom your worthy—”