“The children!—what children? Father, I don’t know what you mean.”
“What children are there to interest me now, except the one set?” said Sir Walter, peevishly. “Edward’s children of course I mean.”
“Edward’s children!”
“Am I growing stupid, or what is the matter with you, Alicia? I don’t generally have to repeat the same thing a dozen times over. Naturally it is Edward’s son I want. A man can scarcely help feeling a certain interest in the boy who is his heir.”
“I am afraid I am very stupid, father. I thought we had settled—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” said the old man: “it is all settled just as you liked, I know; but all the same the boy is my heir.”
Mrs. Russell Penton made no reply. Sir Walter was old enough to be allowed to say what he would without contradiction; but the statement altogether was extremely galling to her. “Settled just as you liked.” It was not as she liked but as he liked. It was he who had moved in it, though it was for her benefit. Though she could not deny that the desire of her life was to possess Penton, to remain in her home, yet she was proudly conscious that she would have taken no step in the matter, done nothing, of her own accord. It was he who had settled it; and now he turned upon her, and asked for the boy who was his heir! Everybody was hard upon Alicia at this moment of fate. They all seemed to have united against her—her husband, the little girl even whom she had wished to defend from fortune-hunters—and now her father himself! If she had been twenty instead of fifty she could not have felt this universal abandonment more. But the practice of so many years was strong upon her. She would not oppose or make any objections to what he wished, though it was of the last repugnance to herself.
“I should have liked,” said the old man, “to see Edward too; when one has advanced so far as I have on the path of life, Alicia, likes and dislikes die away—and prejudices. I may have been too subject to prejudice. Edward never was very much to calculate upon. He had no character; he never could hold his own; but there was very little harm in him, as little harm as good you will perhaps say. Bring me the boy. He will be the same as I, Sir Walter Penton, when his turn comes, and it will not be long before his turn comes. Edward will never last to be an old man like me. He hasn’t got it in him; he hasn’t stuff enough. The young one will be Sir Walter—Sir Walter Penton, the old name. The tenth, isn’t it—Walter the tenth—if we were to count as some of the foreign houses do?’
“Oh, father, don’t!” cried Alicia. To think he could talk, almost jest, about another Walter!
He looked up at her quickly, as if out of a little gathering confusion, seeing for the moment what she meant.