“No.”
“What, nobody at all?”
“Only my sulky cousin; I don't call him anybody,” drawled Sir Charles, who was now relapsing into his normal condition of semi-apathy.
“Oh,” said Miss Bruce gayly, “you must expect him to be a little cross. It is not so very nice to be disinherited, let me tell you.”
“And who has disinherited the fellow?”
“I forget; but you disinherited him among you. Never mind; it can't be helped now. When did you come back to town? I didn't see you at Lady d'Arcy's ball, did I?”
“You did not, unfortunately for me; but you would if I had known you were to be there. But about Richard: he may tell you what he likes, but he was not disinherited; he was bought out. The fact is, his father was uncommonly fast. My grandfather paid his debts again and again; but at last the old gentleman found he was dealing with the Jews for his reversion. Then there was an awful row. It ended in my grandfather outbidding the Jews. He bought the reversion of his estate from his own son for a large sum of money (he had to raise it by mortgages); then they cut off the entail between them, and he entailed the mortgaged estate on his other son, and his grandson (that was me), and on my heir-at-law. Richard's father squandered his thirty thousand pounds before he died; my father husbanded the estates, got into Parliament, and they put a tail to his name.”
Sir Charles delivered this version of the facts with a languid composure that contrasted deliciously with Richard's heat in telling the story his way (to be sure, Sir Charles had got Huntercombe and Bassett, and it is easier to be philosophical on the right side of the boundary hedge), and wound up with a sort of corollary: “Dick Bassett suffers by his father's vices, and I profit by mine's virtues. Where's the injustice?”
“Nowhere, and the sooner you are reconciled the better.”
Sir Charles demurred. “Oh, I don't want to quarrel with the fellow: but he is a regular thorn in my side, with his little trumpery estate, all in broken patches. He shoots my pheasants in the unfairest way.” Here the landed proprietor showed real irritation, but only for a moment. He concluded calmly, “The fact is, he is not quite a gentleman. Fancy his coming and whining to you about our family affairs, and then telling you a falsehood!”