"And does William despise you?" inquired Mildred, a touch of resentment in her usually gentle tone.
"How can you ask it, Mildred?" returned Peter, warmly. "I thought you knew William Arkell better than that. He grows so like his father—good, kindly, honourable. There's not a man in all Westerbury liked and respected as he is. He comes in sometimes in an evening; glad, I fancy, of a little peace and quietness. Between ourselves, Mildred, I fancy that in marrying Charlotte Travice, William found he had caught a Tartar."
"And so they are grand!" observed Mildred, waking out of a fit of musing, and perhaps hardly conscious of what she said.
"Terribly grand. She is. They keep their close carriage now. It strikes me—I may be wrong—but it strikes me that he lives up to every farthing of his income."
"My Uncle George did not."
"No, indeed! Or there'd not have been the fortune that there was to leave to William."
"But, Peter, I gather a good deal now and then from the local papers of the distress that exists in Westerbury, of the depressed state that the trade is falling into; more depressed even than it was when I left, and that need not be. Does not this state of things affect William Arkell?"
"It must affect him; though not, I conclude, to any great extent. You see, Mildred, he has what so many of the other manufacturers want—plenty of money, independent of his business. William has not to force his goods into the market at unfavourable moments; be his stock ever so large, he can hold it until the demand quickens. It is the being obliged to send their goods into the market at low prices, that swamps the others."
"Will the prosperity of the town ever come back to it, think you?"
"Never. And I am not sure that the worst has come yet."