‘Thank you,’ said the Judge, shortly.
The soft dark eyes of Lady Bligh were wet with tears.
‘I think,’ she said, gently, ‘it is a very tender letter. I know of no man but Alfred that could write such a boyish, simple letter—not that I don’t enjoy your clever ones, Gran. But then Alfred never yet wrote to me without writing himself down the dear, true-hearted, affectionate fellow he is; only here, of course, it comes out doubly. But does he not mention her maiden name?’
‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Granville. ‘You remarked the Christian name, though? Gladys! I must say it sounds unpromising. Mary, Eliza, Maria——one would have rather liked a plain, homely, farm-yard sort of name for a squatter’s daughter. But Ermyntrude, or Elaine, or Gladys! These are names of ill-omen; you expect de Vere coming after them, or even worse.’
‘What is a squatter, Gran?’ asked Lady Bligh abruptly.
‘A squatter? I don’t know,’ said Gran, paring the ham daintily as he answered. ‘I don’t know, I’m sure; something to do with bushranging, I should imagine—but I really can’t tell you.’
But there was a set of common subjects of which Gran was profoundly and intentionally ignorant; and it happened that Greater Britain was one of them. If he had known for certain whether Sydney (for instance) was a town or a colony or an island, he would have kept the knowledge carefully to himself, and been thoroughly ashamed of it. And it was the same with other subjects understanded of the Board-scholars. This queer temper of mind is not indeed worth analysing; nevertheless, it is peculiar to a certain sort of clever young fellows, and Granville Bligh was a very fair specimen of the clever young fellow. He was getting on excellently at the Bar, for so young a man. He also wrote a little, with plenty of impudence and epigram, if nothing else. But this was not his real line. Still, what he did at all, he did more or less cleverly. There was cleverness in every line of his smooth dark face; there was uncommon shrewdness in his clear gray eyes. His father had the same face and the same eyes—with this difference added to the differences naturally due to age: there were wisdom, and dignity, and humanity in the face and glance of the Judge; but the nobility of expression thus given was not inherited by the Judge’s younger son.
The Judge spoke again, breaking a silence of some minutes:—
‘As you say, Mildred, it seems to have been all very wild and sudden; but when we have said this, we have probably said the worst there is to say. At least, let us hope so. Of my own knowledge many men have gone to Australia, as Alfred went, and come back with the best of wives. I seem to have heard, Granville, that that is what Merivale did; and I have met few more admirable women than Mrs Merivale.’
‘It certainly is the case, sir,’ said Granville, who had been patronised to some extent by Merivale, Q.C. ‘But Mrs Merivale was scarcely “born and bred in the Bush”; and if she had what poor Alfred, perhaps euphemistically, calls “mannerisms”—I have detected no traces of any myself—when Merivale married her, at least she had money.’