This ejaculation seemed to appear to Lady Ombersley as fitting, for she nodded again, looking at her brother in a woe-begone fashion, and twisting the fringe of her shawl between her fingers.
“So it is Charles who calls the tune!” said Sir Horace.
“No one could have been more generous,” said Lady Ombersley unhappily. “We cannot but be sensible of it.”
“Damn his impudence!” said Sir Horace, himself a father. “What’s he done?”
“Well, Horace, you might not know it, because you are always abroad, but poor Ombersley had a great many debts.”
“Everyone knows that! Never knew him when he wasn’t under a cloud! You’re not going to tell me the boy was fool enough to settle ’em?”
“But, Horace, someone had to settle them!” she protested. “You can have no notion how difficult things were becoming! And with the younger boys to establish creditably, and the dear girls — It is no wonder that Charles should be so anxious that Cecilia should make a good match!”
“Providing for the whole pack, is he? More fool he! What about the mortgages? If the greater part of Ombersley’s inheritance had not been entailed he would have gambled the whole away long since!”
“I do not properly understand entails,” said his sister, “but I am afraid that Charles did not behave just as he should over it. Ombersley was very much displeased, though I shall always say that to call one’s first-born a serpent’s tooth is to use quite unbecoming language! It seems that when Charles came of age he might have made everything quite easy for his poor papa, if only he had been in the least degree obliging! But nothing would prevail upon him to agree to break the entail, so all was at a standstill, and one cannot blame Ombersley for being vexed! And then that odious old man died.”
“When?” demanded Sir Horace. “How comes it that I never heard a word of this before today?”