“So far as the Chief is concerned, it is. He has written a furious letter to his granddaughter,—dwelt forcibly on the ingratitude of her conduct. There is nothing old people so constantly refer to ingratitude as young folks falling in love. It is strange what a close tie would seem to connect this sin of ingratitude with the tender passion. He has reminded her of all the good precepts and wise examples that were placed before her at the Priory, and how shamefully she would seem to have forgotten them. He asks her, Did she ever see him fall in love? Did she ever see any weakness of this kind in Mrs. Beales the housekeeper, or Joe the gardener?”
“What stuff and nonsense!” said Lady Lendrick, turning angrily away from him. “Sir William is not an angel, but as certainly he is not a fool.”
“There I differ from you altogether. He may be the craftiest lawyer, the wisest judge, the neatest scholar, and the best talker of his day,—these are all claims I cannot adjudicate on,—they are far and away above me. But I do pretend to know something about life and the world we live in, and I tell you that your all-accomplished Chief Baron is, in whatever relates to these, as consummate an ass as ever I met with. It is not that he is sometimes wrong; it is that he is never right.”
“I can imagine he is not very clever at billiards, and it is possible that there may be persons more conversant than he with the odds at Tattersall's,” said she, with a sneer.
“Not bad things to know something about, either of them,” said he, quietly; “but not exactly what I was alluding to. It is, however, somewhat amusing, mother, to see you come out as his defender. I assure you, honestly, when I counselled him on that new wig, and advised him to the choice of that dark velvet paletot, I never contemplated his making a conquest of you.”
“He has done some unwise things in life,” said she, with a fierce energy; “but I do not know if he has ever done so foolish a one as inviting you to come to live under his roof.”
“No, mother; the mistake was his not having done it earlier,—done it when he might have fallen in more readily with the wise changes I have introduced into his household, and when—most important element—he had a better balance at his banker's. You can't imagine what sums of money he has gone through.”
“I know nothing—I do not desire to know anything—of Sir William's money matters.”
Not heeding in the slightest degree the tone of reproof she spoke in, he went on, in the train of his own thoughts: “Yes! It would have made a considerable difference to each of us had we met somewhat earlier. It was a sort of backing I always wanted in life.”
“There was something else that you needed far more,” said she, with a sarcastic sternness.