“I could have sworn it. It was a woman's quarrel, and she would sacrifice her own son for vengeance. I 'll be able to pay her a very refined compliment when I next see her, Cave, and tell her that she is not in the least altered from the day I first met her. And has Lionel been passed over in the entail?”
“So he believes, and I think with too good reason.”
“And all because he loved a girl whose alliance would confer honor on the proudest house in the land. I think I 'll go over and pay Holt a visit. It is upwards of forty years since I saw Sir Hugh, and I have a notion I could bring him to reason.”
Cave shook his head doubtingly.
“Ay, to be sure,” sighed Fossbrooke, “it does make a precious difference whether one remonstrates at the head of a fine fortune or pleads for justice in a miner's jacket. I was forgetting that, Cave. Indeed, I am always forgetting it. And have they made no sort of settlement on Lionel,—nothing to compensate him for the loss of his just expectations?”
“I suspect not. He has told me nothing beyond the fact that he is to have the purchase-money for the lieutenant-colonelcy, which I was ready and willing to vacate in his favor, but which we are unable to negotiate, because he owes a heavy sum, to the payment of which this must go.”
“Can nothing be done with his creditor?—can we not manage to secure the debt and pay the interest?”
“This same creditor is one not easily dealt with,” said Cave, slowly.
“A money-lender?”
“No. He 's the man I just told you wanted to involve Trafford with his own wife. As dangerous a fellow as ever lived. I take shame to myself to own that, though acquainted with him for years, I never really knew his character till lately.”