"Did I? I was not aware of it; but are you not very rash to travel so soon?"
"No, I would get a fever if I remained."
CHAPTER IX.
STRUGGLES.
Allerton Court has been in our family since the days of the Tudors. How the careless scapegrace Egertons kept it so long I cannot imagine; chiefly, I believe, by the sacrifice of larger and more valuable estates elsewhere. Its present possessor, my half brother, was a very different person from his predecessors. My father succeeded to an impoverished title at an early age, and soon after attaining his majority, married a wealthy city heiress, who, finding herself uneasy and misplaced in fashionable life, imagined she was disgusted with the world and its frivolities, and gave herself up for the remainder of her "sojourn here below" to quacks, spiritual, and medical. Poor woman! I believe she sincerely wished to do right, and with this view brought up her son under an amount of religious pressure that reduced him to the adamantine condition I have before hinted at. No doubt the various patent pills and powders she was in the habit of administering to him, had their share in producing the curious dormant state of his physical and mental powers. Altogether, Egerton was a problem I never dreamt of solving, and now that he had suddenly acquired interest in my eyes, I blushed at the thought of asking his brotherly assistance to settle my affairs into marriageable shape, almost as deeply as at the idea of begging from a stranger.
My father remained unmarried for nearly two years after the death of his first wife, and their son must have been nineteen when the bright eyes and graceful manners of Lady Mary De Burgh captivated the disconsolate widower, still young and handsome enough to please the fancy and interest the heart of a girl, only some few months older than his heir. I have but slight recollection of my mother. I was the youngest, and she did not survive my birth more than three years; both my sister and myself were extremely like her, and adored by my father, who never could, even in his childhood, caress so rigidly orthodox a young gentleman as his eldest son. Egerton was a thing apart, and belonged to his country and the peerage; but we were the darlings of his heart; spoiled children, reared in luxury and indulgence. How well I remember the bitter and passionate grief with which I received the intelligence of his death, and the choking sobs that interrupted my reproaches to Egerton, for not sending for me in time to let me hear his voice once more, feeling that every unconscious game of cricket in which I had joined while he lay struggling between life and death was an unnatural piece of levity, unpardonable!
All this passed over soon, and my life was happy enough, but Mary used often to look sad, and was very glad to marry Wentworth, though he was a good deal older than herself. The large fortune my father's first wife brought him was, of course, settled on her children, so Mary and I had but the slender portions usually allotted to the younger Egertons, but mine was doubled by her husband's refusal to accept hers.
This is more than I meant to have stated about myself, but it was necessary to show my position.
A cold raw damp November day, with occasional dashes of heavy rain, the leafless trees bending before the sudden gusts of wind that accompanied them; and every object ten yards off shrouded in a dark fog that seemed to blend heaven and earth in one equable gloom. I shivered as I drew up the windows of the cab into which I had thrown myself at the railway station, near Allerton, observing how strongly the conveyance appeared to partake of the general humidity. The avenue seemed interminable; and when at length my humble vehicle drew up before the portico, I received the pleasing intelligence, "my Lord is not at home, Captain Egerton, but will you please to walk in?"