“Ever yours,
“Maurice Darcy.”
As with eyes half dimmed by tears Lady Eleanor read these lines, she could not help muttering a thanksgiving that her husband was at least beyond the risk of that danger of which Bicknell spoke,—an indignity, she feared, he never could have survived.
“And better still,” cried Helen, “if a season of struggle and privation awaits us, that we should bear it alone,' and not before his eyes, for whom such a prospect would be torture. Now let us see how to meet the evil.” So saying, she once more opened Bicknell's letter, and began to peruse it carefully; while Lady Eleanor sat, pale and in silence, nor even by a gesture showing any consciousness of the scene.
“What miserable trifling do all these legal subtleties seem!” said the young girl, after she had read for some time; “how trying to patience to canvass the petty details by which a clear and honest cause must be asserted! Here are fees to counsel, briefs, statements, learned opinions, and wise consultations multiplied to show that we are the rightful owners of what our ancestors have held for centuries, while every step of usurpation by these Hickmans would appear almost unassailable. With what intensity of purpose, too, does that family persecute us! All these actions are instituted by them; these bonds are all in their hands. What means this hate?”
Lady Eleanor looked up; and as her eyes met Helen's, a faint flush colored her cheek, for she thought of her interview with the old doctor, and that proposal by which their conflicting interests were to be satisfied.
“We surely never injured them,” resumed the young girl, eagerly; “they were always well and hospitably received by us. Lionel even liked Beecham, when they were boys together,-a mild and quiet youth he was.”
“So I thought him, too,” said Lady Eleanor, stealing a cautious glance at her daughter. “We saw them,” continued she, more boldly, “under circumstances of no common difficulty,—struggling under the embarrassment of a false social position, with such a grandfather!”
“And such a father! Nay, mamma, of the two you must confess the doctor was our favorite. The old man's selfishness was not half so vulgar as his son's ambition.”
“And yet, Helen,” said Lady Eleanor, calmly, “such are the essential transitions by which families are formed; wealthy in one generation, aspiring in the next, recognized gentry—mayhap titled—in the third. It is but rarely that the whole series unfolds itself before our eyes at once, as in the present instance, and consequently it is but rarely that we detect so palpably all its incongruities and absurdities. A few years more,” added she, with a deep sigh, “and these O'Reillys will be regarded as the rightful owners of Gwynne Abbey by centuries of descent; and if an antiquary detect the old leopards of the Darcys frowning from some sculptured keystone, it will be to weave an ingenious theory of intermarriage between the houses.”