‘He has suffered for it, and pretty severely, and I do think it has done him good. You must remember that he had great disadvantages.’
‘Which didn’t hinder his brother from turning out well.’
‘Robert went to a public school—’ and there she perceived she was saying something awkward, but Sir John half laughed, and assented.
‘Quite right, Miss Charlecote; private pupils are a delusion? George never had one without a screw loose about him. Parish priests were never meant for tutors—and I’ve told my boy, Charlie, that the one thing I’ll never consent to is his marrying on pupils—and doing two good things by halves. It has well nigh worried his uncle to death, and Cecily into the bargain.’
‘Robert was younger, and the elders were all worse managed. Besides, Mervyn’s position, as it was treated, made him discontented and uncomfortable; and this attachment, which he was too—too—I can find no word for it but contemptible—to avow, must have preyed on his temper and spirits all the time he was trying to shake it off. He was brought up to selfishness, and nothing but what he underwent last year could have shaken him out of it.’
‘Then you think he is shaken out of it?’
‘Where Bertha is concerned I see that he is—therefore I should hope it with his wife.’
‘Well, well, I suppose what must be must be. Not that I have the least authority to say anything, but I could not help telling the poor fellow thus much—that if he went on steadily for a year or so, and continued in the same mind, I did not see why he should not ask my brother and Cecily to reconsider it. Then it will be for them to decide, you know.’
For them! As if Sir John were not in character as well as name the guiding head of the family.
‘And now,’ he added, ‘you will let me come to your rooms this evening, for Mrs. Holmby is in such displeasure with me, that I shall get nothing but black looks. Besides, I want to see a little more of that nice girl, his sister.’