“I'm glad of it, heartily glad of it! Not that, as regarded myself, it mattered much where I was laid up in dock; but I find that this isolation, instead of drawing the members of my family more closely together, has but served to widen the breach between them. Lady Hester and Sydney rarely meet; George sees neither of them, and rarely comes near me, so that the sooner we go hence the better for all of us.”
Grounsell gave a dry nod of assent, without speaking.
“Sydney is very anxious to go and pass some time with her aunt Conway; but I foresee that, if I consent, the difference between Lady Hester and her will then become an irreconcilable quarrel. You don't agree with me, Grounsell?”
“I do not. I never knew the ends of a fractured bone unite by grating them eternally against each other.”
“And, as for George, the lounging habits of his service and cigars have steeped him in an indolence from which there is no emerging. I scarcely know what to do with him.”
“It's hard enough to decide upon,” rejoined Grounsell; “he has some pursuits, but not one ambition.”
“He has very fair abilities, certainly,” said Sir Stafford, half peevishly.
“Very fair!” nodded Grounsell.
“A good memory, a quick apprehension.”
“He has one immense deficiency, for which nothing can compensate,” said the doctor, solemnly.