“Of course you see now, Sir Thomas, how ill a match Master John Feversham should have been for Blanche.”
“Wherefore?” was the short answer.
“Sith he is no longer the heir.” (Sith and since are both contractions of sithence.)
“Oh!—ah!” said Sir Thomas, as unpromisingly as before.
“Why, surely you would ne’er dream of so monstrous a thing?”
Sir Thomas, who had been looking out of the window, came across to the fire, and took up the master’s position before it—standing just in the middle of the hearth with his back to the fire.
“Better wait, Orige, and see whereof John and Blanche be dreaming,” said he calmly.
“What reckoneth he to do now, meet for livelihood?”
It would be difficult to estimate the number of degrees by which poor John had fallen in her Ladyship’s thermometer, since he had ceased to be the expected heir of Feversham Hall.
“He looketh,” said Sir Thomas absently, as if he were thinking of something else, “to receive—if God’s good pleasure be—holy orders.”