'I could not stay there,' said the colonel, 'and see my young brother in my place, and his mother ruling where your mother should by right have ruled. They did not love me either,—why should they?—and I felt more a stranger there than anywhere else. So I took the little property that came to me from my mother, to which my father in his will had made a small addition, and left England and home for ever.'
There was a pause of some length.
'Who is left there now, of the family?' Esther asked.
'I have not heard.'
'Do they never write to you?'
'Never.'
'Nor you to them, papa?'
'No. Since I came away there has been no intercourse whatever between our families.'
'Oh, papa!'
'I am inclined to regret it now, for your sake.'