To sustain these stores of knowledge Mr. Morningside required much leisure for what is called heavy reading; and heavy reading is not easy in that genial family life which means incessant talk and incessant interruption. Mr. Morningside would have preferred, therefore, to keep his den on the fifth floor to himself; but his wife loved London, and he could not refuse her the privilege of occasionally sharing his nest on a level with the spires and towers of the great city. She made her presence agreeably felt by tables covered with photograph easels, Vallauris vases, stray flowers in specimen glasses, which were continually being knocked over, Japanese screens, and every known variety of chair-back; and albeit he was an essentially dutiful husband, Mr. Morningside never felt happier than when he had seen his Ruth comfortably seated in the Bournemouth express on her way to the home of her forefathers for one of those protracted visits that no one but a near relation would venture to make. He left her cheerily on such occasions, with a promise to run down to the Priory on Saturday evenings whenever it was possible to leave the helm.
Mr. Morningside had liked his brother-in-law as well as it was in him to like any man, and had been horrified at that sudden inexplicable doom; but Sir Godfrey being snatched off this earth in the flower of his age, Mr. Morningside thought it only natural that the young Morningsides should derive some benefit, immediate or contingent, from their uncle’s estate. It was, therefore, with some disgust that he heard that clause in the will which gave Jessica’s sons the preference over all the sons of Ruth. True that, failing any son of Jessica’s, the estate was to lapse to the eldest surviving son of Ruth; but what earthly value was such a reversionary interest as this in the case of a lady whose nursery was like a rabbit warren?
“I congratulate you on your eldest boy’s prospects, Grenville,” said Mr. Morningside, sourly. “Your Tom,” a boy whom he hated, “will come into a very fine thing one of these days.”
“Humph,” muttered Grenville, “Lady Carmichael’s is a good life, and I should be very sorry to see it shortened. Besides, who can tell? Before this time next year there may be a nearer claimant.”
“Lord have mercy upon us,” exclaimed Morningside, “I never thought of that contingency.”
CHAPTER IX.
“Poor girl! put on thy stifling widow’s weed,
And ’scape at once from Hope’s accursèd bands;
To-day thou wilt not see him, nor to-morrow,
And the next day will be a day of sorrow.”