“Oh, Dick! don’t marry a girl for her money,” said Virginia, half laughing; but she could never have imagined herself listening with so much respect to Dick’s sentiments.
In truth, want of sense and insight had never been the cause of the Seytons’ errors; but just as in some men a warm heart and tender conscience fail to make head against violent passion, so that they feel their sins while they commit them, so in the Seytons a shrewd mental sense of their own folly had always co-existed with the headstrong self-will which had overridden it. Dick had a less passionate nature, and was, moreover, less at the mercy of circumstances than if he had been brought up as the heir, and his friends in London were sensible people.
“Perhaps,” said his sister, “you might ask Alvar what he thinks of it.”
“Alvar? Oh, ho! is that come to pass again? So, you’ve made it up. Well, it is a good thing that you have some one to take care of you,” said Dick, sententiously.
Alvar was taken into counsel, and the results of much discussion and consideration may be briefly told.
Dick’s plans were hailed by his father and uncle as an escape from a prospect, which had made death doubly bitter to the one, and the rest of life distasteful to the other. And an unexpected purchaser of the two farms was found in Judge Cheriton, who had been talking for some time of buying a small property which might be a home for him when his public career was over, and a holiday retreat for the present. There was a farm-house at High Ashrigg which might be improved into a modern antique of the style at present admired. The two farms were therefore purchased at once of Mr Seyton himself, and with his full consent and approval.
The rest of Dick’s plan could not be carried out in his father’s lifetime, but it was agreed to by Mr Seyton as the best thing his heir could do.
All this time Cheriton was mending slowly, but with much uncertainty as to how far his recovery would be complete. He very soon detected the turn that Alvar’s affairs had taken, much to his satisfaction; but Jack, guessing that the news of Roland’s death would be a shock to him, it was not till he had begun to insist that his own state must not again delay Alvar’s marriage, that he heard the story of which it might have been said “that nothing in Roland Seyton’s life became him like the leaving of it;” for it proved that he had met his death by an act of considerable bravery, which had saved the lives of others of the party. Perhaps Cheriton, unable to be untender to the memory of his boyish ideal, gave him a truer regret than any of his own family.
He listened with great interest to all the future arrangements, and was the first to suggest that his old acquaintance, Mr Wilson’s son, was to be married to a young lady of fortune, and might form a possible future tenant for Elderthwaite.
As for the rest, even setting her deep mourning aside, Virginia would not hear of marrying while her father grew daily weaker; nor was Cheriton at all equal to the inevitable excitement and difficulty of arranging plans for the winter which must have ensued.