For a few confidential minutes before dinner, Lady de Courcy and her sister-in-law sat together in the latter's dressing-room, discussing the unreasonableness of the squire, who had expressed himself with more than ordinary bitterness as to the folly—he had probably used some stronger word—of these London proceedings.
'Heavens!' said the countess, with much eager animation; 'what can the man expect? What does he wish you to do?'
'He would like to sell the house in London, and bury us all here for ever. Mind, I was there only for ten weeks.'
'Barely time for the girls to get their teeth properly looked at! But, Arabella, what does he say?' Lady de Courcy was very anxious to learn the exact truth of the matter, and ascertain, if she could, whether Mr. Gresham was really as poor as he pretended to be.
'Why, he said yesterday that he would have no more going to town at all; that he was barely able to pay the claims made on him, and keep up the house here, and that he would not'
'Would not what?' asked the countess.
'Why, he said that he would not utterly ruin poor Frank.'
'Ruin Frank!'
'That's what he said.'
'But, surely, Arabella, it is not so bad as that? What possible reason can there be for him to be in debt?'
'He is always talking of those elections.'
'But, my dear, Boxall Hill paid all that off. Of course Frank will not have such an income as there was when you married into the family; we all know that. And whom will he have to thank but his father? But Boxall Hill paid all those debts, and why should there be any difficulty now?'
'It was those nasty dogs, Rosina,' said the Lady Arabella, almost in tears.
'Well, I for one never approved of the hounds coming to Greshamsbury. When a man has once involved his property he should not incur any expenses that are not absolutely necessary. That is a golden rule which Mr. Gresham ought to have remembered. Indeed, I put it to him nearly in those very words; but Mr. Gresham never did, and never will receive with common civility anything that comes from me.'
'I know, Rosina, he never did; and yet where would he have been but for the De Courcys?' So exclaimed, in her gratitude, the Lady Arabella; to speak truth, however, but for the De Courcys, Mr. Gresham might have been at this moment on the top of Boxall Hill, monarch of all he surveyed.
'As I was saying' continued the countess. 'I never approved
