“No, but it is all of a piece! Setting bears onto the dons! I might have guessed how it would be! And I dare say Ned never so much as told him he should not have done so!”
“No,” she reflected. “I believe he did not.”
“No!” he ejaculated. “But so it is always!” He drove on in fuming silence for a little while.
She said diffidently, “I think your brother Nicholas was very much shocked by what had happened.”
“I should hope he might be indeed! To be putting Ned to all this trouble! It beats everything! I was never more angry with him in my life!”
She was silent. After a moment he said in a severe tone, “I do not mean to say that there is any harm in Nicky, but he is a great deal too thoughtless, and now we see where it has led him. However, I suppose Carlyon will settle it all, and we must hope that it will be a lesson to Nick.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling a little. “Mr. Nicholas seemed to think also that his brother would settle it all.”
“Ay, he and Harry were always the same!” John exclaimed. “Forever getting into scrapes and running to Ned to pull them out again! While as for my sister Georgiana—But I should not be talking in this way! You know, Miss—Mrs. Cheviot—Ned is the best of good fellows, and it vexes me beyond bearing when I see him so imposed on! Take that creature, Eustace Cheviot! I dare say no one knows the half of what Ned had done for him or the forbearance he has shown, but does he get one word of gratitude for it? No! I believe Cheviot veritably hated him!”
She shivered. “You are very right. When I saw him, there was such an expression of enmity in his eyes, when they rested on your brother, that I was almost afraid. Why should it be? It is very terrible!”
He agreed to it, adding, “There are some men, ma’am, who have such twisted natures that they cannot see virtue in another without hating it. My cousin was such a one. He resented my brother’s authority. When Carlyon has rescued him again and again from the consequences of his own conduct it has but increased his jealous hatred of him. It is a good thing for us all that he is dead. But I wish he had not met his end at Nick’s hands.”