Time had not filled the cleft between Anthony and his father; and Fox Crymes had done his best to prevent its being filled or being bridged over; for he now saw a good deal of the old Squire Cleverdon, and he took opportunity to drop a corrosive remark occasionally into the open and rankling wound, so as to inflame and anger it. Now it was a reported speech of Anthony, showing how he calculated on his father's forgiveness; or a statement of what he would do to the house, or with the trees, when his father died and he succeeded to Hall; or else Fox told of some slighting remark on the beggary of everything at Willsworthy, made by a villager, or imagined for the occasion by himself.
The old man, without suspecting it, was being turned about the finger of the cunning young Crymes, who had made up his mind to obtain the hand of Elizabeth and with it Hall. So could he satisfy his own ambition, and best revenge himself on Anthony and Urith.
The wit and malice of Fox acted as a grinding-stone on which the anger of the Squire was being constantly whetted, as if it had not at the first been sharp enough.
The old man could not endure the idea of his property ever falling to the daughter of Richard Malvine—of Malvine blood ever reigning within the walls of his mansion.
He had not yet altered his will, and he could not resolve how to do this. He did not desire to constitute Bessie his heiress. He could not reconcile himself to the thought of Hall passing out of the direct line, of another than a Cleverdon owning the estate where his ancestors had sat for centuries, and which he had made into his own freehold. All the disgust he had felt when Elizabeth was born, and he found himself father of a daughter as his first-born, woke up again, and he could not bring himself to constitute her his heiress. Yet, on the other hand, it was equally, if not more, against his will that it should pass to his revolted son and the daughter of his mortal enemy. As he was thus tossing between two odious alternatives, the idea of marrying Julian himself lightened on his mind, and he seized it with desperate avidity; yet not without a doubt he refused to give utterance to, or permit in another. In a vague manner he hoped that the union of Fox and Bessie might pave the way to his own marriage with Julian.
CHAPTER XXVIII. A WIDENING OF THE RIFT.
"Urith," said Anthony, "we are to go together to the dance at the Cakes; I have said we would."
"The dance, Anthony! It cannot be."
"Why not? Because I particularly desire it?"