‘Who were the Belassis’?—the seniors, I mean? Were they not very much below your family in social position?’
‘Yes, I always thought so. I always wondered how Celia could make such a marriage, though we ought not to be proud I suppose; and Alfred Belassis had very good worldly prospects.’
‘I want you to tell me how it all came about, so far as you know the story. Begin with the father. How did the intimacy between the families begin?’
‘The father was James Belassis. He was a solicitor in the town of Darwen—where the coach stops, you know. He was a respectable kind of man, but not a gentleman. Nobody knew much about him until father—our father, I mean—found out that he was a very clever man of business, and gradually put all his affairs into his hands. Other people followed father’s example, and Belassis soon found himself in very much improved circumstances, and on the high-road to wealth. He had been a careful, saving man always, and had made a fair amount of money before; and I can remember father saying one day, that he had a son whom he had educated almost like a gentleman, and who was, he fancied, rather wild.’
‘When did all this take place?’ asked Phil.
‘I don’t exactly know when father first employed Belassis. It must have been when I was quite a girl. But it was, I think, in 1843 that Alfred Belassis first appeared upon the scene.’
‘What made him come?’
‘His father sent for him. He was getting on so well that he wanted his son to come and take a share of the business, and learn enough to step into his shoes. Alfred had been in the office when quite young; but his father had indulged him, and it had ended by his going off to see the world, that he might be made into a gentleman.’
‘The world must be congratulated on the gentleman it has turned out,’ remarked Tor. ‘Well, the young man came back in ’43, did he?—to a sudden prospect of wealth and importance; and what then?’
‘I have always thought it was at that time that James Belassis began to have hopes of making a good marriage for his son, and I believe he always had his eye upon one of our father’s three daughters. We were not bad-looking girls, Maud, Celia, and I; but men—marriageable men—were scarce, and it was not to be wondered at if James Belassis should make such a plan. His son would be rich, and he had had a gentleman’s education, and was not a match to be utterly despised in these parts; I think our father secretly favoured him. He wanted his daughters well married, I know.’