One only old daub of a grandmother was there; all the rest had been sold, and their vacant places remained discoloured on the walls. There were two or three dismembered old chairs, the richly dight windows broken, the floor rat-eaten. The general stood and looked, and did not sigh, but absolutely groaned. They went to the shattered glass door, which looked out upon the terrace—that terrace which had cost thousands of pounds to raise, and he called Cecilia to show her the place where the youngsters used to play, and to point out some of his favourite haunts.
“It is most melancholy to see a family-place so gone to ruin,” said Beauclerc; “if it strikes us so much, what must it be to the son of this family, to come back to the house of his ancestors, and find it thus desolate! Poor Beltravers!”
The expression of the general’s eye changed.
“I am sure you must pity him, my dear general,” continued Beauclerc.
“I might, had he done any thing to prevent, or had he done less to hasten, this ruin.”
“How? he should not have cut down the trees, do you mean?—but it was to pay his father’s debts——”
“And his own,” said the general.
“He told me his father’s, sir.”
“And I tell you his own.”
“Even so,” said Beauclerc, “debts are not crimes for which we ought to shut the gates of mercy on our fellow-creatures—and so young a man as Beltravers, left to himself, without a home, his family abroad, no parent, no friend—no guardian friend.”