“Ah, my poor boy,” said Miss Susan, “life and marriage are not for him!” She paused a moment and dried her eyes, and gulped down a sob in her throat. “But you may be right,” she said in a low tone, “perhaps, whoever our successors were, we should feel it—even you, Everard.”
“You should never go out of Whiteladies for me,” said the young man, “that you may be sure of; but I shall not have the chance. Farrel-Austin, for the sake of spiting the family generally, will make a point of outliving us all. There is this good in it, however,” he added, with a slight movement of his head, which looked like throwing off a disagreeable impression, and a laugh, “if poor Herbert, or I, supposing such a thing possible, had taken possession, it might have troubled your affection for us, Aunt Susan. Nay, don’t shake your head. In spite of yourself it would have affected you. You would have felt it bitter, unnatural, that the boys you had brought up and fostered should take your house from you. You would have struggled against the feeling, but you could not have helped it, I know.”
“Yes; a great deal you know about an old woman’s feelings,” said Miss Susan with a smile.
“And as for these unknown people, who never heard of Whiteladies, perhaps, and might pull down the old house, or play tricks with it—for instance, your grocer at Bude, the best of men, with a charming respectable family, a pretty daughter, who is a dress-maker, and a son who has charge of the cheese and butter. After all, Aunt Susan, you could not in your heart prefer them even to old Farrel-Austin, who is a gentleman at least, and knows the value of the old house.”
“I am not so sure of that,” said Miss Susan, though she had shivered at the description. “Farrel-Austin is our enemy; he has different ways of thinking, different politics, a different side in everything; and besides—don’t laugh in your light way, Everard; everybody does not take things lightly as you do—there is something between him and us, an old grievance that I don’t care to speak of now.”
“So you have told me,” said the young man. “Well, we cannot help it, anyhow; if he must succeed, he must succeed, though I wish it was myself rather for your sake.”
“Not for your own?” said Miss Susan, with restrained sharpness, looking up at him. “The Farrel-Austins are your friends, Everard. Oh, yes, I know! nowadays young people do not take up the prejudices of their elders. It is better and wiser, perhaps, to judge for yourself, to take up no foregone conclusion; but for my part, I am old-fashioned, and full of old traditions. I like my friends, somehow, reasonably or unreasonably, to be on my side.”
“You have never even told me why it was your side,” said Everard, with rising color; “am I to dislike my relations without even knowing why? That is surely going too far in partisanship. I am not fond of Farrel-Austin himself; but the rest of the family—”
“The—girls; that is what you would say.”
“Well, Aunt Susan! the girls if you please; they are very nice girls. Why should I hate them because you hate their father? It is against common-sense, not to speak of anything else.”