“And Margaret will engage herself to you, Ralph, who are ten or twelve years older than she is? And Mrs. Helmstedt will sanction that engagement? Well, well, well.”
“Why, what is the matter?” asked Colonel Houston.
“This world! this world! I did not think that Margaret was so light and fickle, or that her mother was so—governed by worldly motives.”
“Pray tell me what you mean?” asked Ralph Houston, uneasily.
“Why, the whole county knew Margaret and my Franky were like a pair of young turtle doves. Everybody remarked it, and said they were born for each other! Shame on you, Ralph Houston, to offer to supplant your younger brother in his absence; and shame on that wanton girl and her worldly mother to allow you to do it!”
“Nellie, come, come, this will not do,” said Colonel Houston.
“But I know what it means,” Nellie continued impetuously, “they know you are the eldest son and heir according to our barbarous law of primogeniture, which, I thank Heaven, Mr. Jefferson is about to get repealed, and they think that you will have nearly all your father’s estate, while poor Franky will have little or nothing; but I’ll see! All that I have any control over shall go to swell the portion of my Franky, until we shall see if he shall not be a little richer than his fortunate elder brother. Oh, the unprincipled creatures.”
“Cornelia!” exclaimed Colonel Houston, severely.
Ralph’s face flushed for an instant, and then, controlling himself, he answered, with his usual moderation:
“You are in error, fair little mother; I neither could, nor would supplant any man, least of all my brother; no such attachment as that to which you allude exists, or has existed; I have ascertained that fact.”