“And he was your father's adviser for years!” said L'Estrange, with a tone almost despondent.
“But for which he never would have assumed the tone of dictation he has used towards me. Lord Culduff, I remember, said, 'The first duty of a man on coming to his property is to change his agent, and his next to get rid of the old servants.' I do not like the theory, George; but from a certain point of view it is not without reason.”
“I suspect that neither you nor I want to look at life from that point of view,” said L'Estrange, with some emotion.
“Not till we can't help, I 'm sure; but these crafty men of the world say that we all arrive at their modus operandi in the end; that however generously, however trustfully and romantically, we start on the morning of life, before evening we come to see that in this game we call the world it is only the clever player that escapes ruin.”
“I don't—that is, I won't believe that.”
“Quite right, George. The theory would tell terribly against fellows like us; for, let us do our very best, we must be bunglers at the game. What a clever pair of hacks are those yonder! that gray the lady is on has very showy action.”
“Look at the liver chestnut the groom is riding—there's the horse for my money—so long and so low—a regular turnspit, and equal to any weight. I declare, that's Lady Augusta, and that's Pracontal with her. See how the Frenchman charges the ox-fences; he 'll come to grief if he rides at speed against timber.”
The party on horseback passed in a little dip of the ground near them at a smart canter, and soon were out of sight again.
“What a strange intimacy for her, is it not?”
“Julia says, the dash of indiscretion in it was the temptation she could n't resist, and I suspect she's right. She said to me herself one day, 'I love skating, but I never care for it except the ice is so thin that I hear it giving way on every side as I go.'”