‘No: you will never forgive me. I had some once, made up in a little cross, with gold ends; but one day, when she would not let me go to Castle Blanch, I shied it into the river, in a rage.’
She was touched at his being so spiritless as not even to say that she ought to have been thrown in after it.
‘I wonder,’ she said, by way of enlivening him, ‘whether you will fall in with the auburn-haired Charlecote.’
‘Whereas Canada is a bigger place than England, the disaster may be averted, I hope. A colonial heir-at-law might be a monstrous bore. Moreover, it would cancel all that I can’t but hope for that child.’
‘You might hope better things for him than expectations.’
‘He shall never have any! But it might come without. Why, Lucy, a few years in that country, and I shall be able to give him the best of educations and release you from drudgery; and when independent, we could go back to the Holt on terms to suit even your proud stomach, and might make the dear old thing happy in her old age.’
‘If that Holt were but out of your head.’
‘If I knew it willed to the County Hospital, shouldn’t I wish as much to be with her as before? I mean to bring up my son as a gentleman, with no one’s help! But you see, Lucy, it is impossible not to wish for one’s child what one has failed in oneself—to wish him to be a better edition.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘For these first few years the old woman will do well enough for him, poor child. Robert has promised to look in on him.’