the principles of the paternal toast in a strange land, he was suspected of being acquainted with men who thought as little of Church as of King. At last a letter arrived from him in which he avowed himself an Atheist. It was a bitter trial to the Squire, but he did not flinch from his duty. He forbade the name of his son to be mentioned in his hearing. The estates of Gwynne would descend to the male heir, only in default of direct testamentary disposition on the part of the head of the house. The Squire could leave the property away from his unworthy son if he so willed. No Gwynne had made a will for many generations. Whether the Squire had broken the custom no one knew.
The Squire had lost his heir, but he was not childless. He had still his nephew to ride with him to cover, and discuss the stirring history of the times over his not immoderate cups. And Harry Gwynne was a bold and merry lad, frank and outspoken, modest and true, and in all respects such as might comfort a fatherly old uncle’s heart. Harry and his uncle were great friends, but not such friends as were the Squire and his daughter.
Mistress Elizabeth Gwynne, at nineteen years of age, was said to have been particularly beautiful. I have described the features of the woman, and from them may be guessed the loveliness of the girl. She was very beautiful, and very clever: but her temper was high and passionate. The visitor, who should see her unruffled and serene, might deem it impossible for so gentle a being to transcend the ordinary limits of the anger of her sex. But on the comparatively rare occasions, when her passion mastered her, her paroxysms of rage were fearful. Few cared to encounter her, and none to offer opposition. The presence of her father was the only influence which stilled her wrath. When her father approached, her love conquered her rage, and she was speedily calmed.
This untameable damsel Harry Gwynne had worshipped with an untiring constancy, ever since he had been old enough to hold any opinions at all. He was a year or two older than his mistress, but from the days when they both wore frocks, she had been, in imperial sense, the mistress, and he the slave. He had played with her, and ridden with her, and quarrelled with her, and obeyed her. He had broken-in a mare for her; he had planted an Italian garden for her; he had acted in all things as one whose existence was ordained for her convenience. All this she had received as her due. She admitted to herself, if ever she thought about the matter, that she was very fond of her cousin; but she was not, on that account, disposed to play the meek maiden, waiting modestly for the kerchief of the sultan. She used her slave’s services with magnificent indifference, and rewarded him sometimes with a smile, and sometimes with a fit of rage.
When no more letters came from Paris, and the Squire began to act as though he had no son, Mistress Bessie evidently deemed herself of increased importance. She had never pretended any love for the disinherited Horace. His airs and graces annoyed her. He could say prettier things than Harry, and he danced a minuet better than—hardly, at least, better than Harry, for that more rustic gentleman could not dance at all. But he had once craned at a hedge; and, on the whole, his sister did not regret his loss. She began to esteem herself the heiress of Gwynne. Papa would do something for Harry, of course, independently of the fortune left by Harry’s mother; but she would be the great lady.
The Squire said not a word of his intentions, but the greater the gulf between him and his son, the tighter appeared the bond that united him to his nephew; and the fonder he grew of his nephew, the oftener did his daughter wax wrath with her cousin, and indeed with everyone else. She was but twenty years old, but she was a notorious termagant; and the old housekeeper at the manor surmised that she would be the last of her branch of the house, for no one would woo so wild a bride—no one, that is, but Master Harry, and she seemed daily less inclined to stoop to the faithful cousin. Unless some terrible lesson should tame her, she would live a cheerless life.
The oftener this wilful lady was told to be a good child, the more pertinaciously she asserted her independence. Poor Harry still worshipped, but he received more frowns than smiles for his pains. One day when he was more than ordinarily definite and demonstrative in his professions of attachment, his mistress stamped her little foot and vowed she hated him—that her father gave too much love to the nephew and too little to his child, and that so far from having any intention of surrendering her heart, she regarded her suitor as the chief bar to her earthly happiness. Of course this was not true. Of course she loved every hair on the head of her yellow-pated cousin. But the statements of young ladies are as mysterious as the dispatches of diplomatists. They use language to conceal their thoughts, though happily their art is not always skilful enough to conceal itself. But whether it was or was not true, it made Harry very miserable. He was in a dilemma. If he was cold to his uncle, his uncle looked pained. If he was not cold to his uncle, he was accused of winning away a father’s love from the personage whom, more than any other, he desired to encircle with all love. On the whole, the household was a stormy one; but now and then a patch of blue sky smiled through the clouds. Bessie forgot her grievances, and spent a merry day with her old playfellow. These intervals were, however, sorrowfully rare.
And now the Squire fell ill. The career of his son had afflicted him more than had been supposed. He was struck with paralysis, and lost the use of his lower limbs. Stretched in his bed or on a couch, he was dependant on others for his necessities and for his pleasures. Harry and his cousin vied with one another in unwearied attention, but a state of things which ought to have healed all breaches seemed to widen the gulf between them. When the Squire called for Harry to read him the Gazette, or to write a letter to the bailiff, the fair Bessie sulked over her harpsichord. And if, perchance, the Squire said, “Bessie, will you write as I dictate?” or, “Bessie, I am going to be lifted into the coach, and to be driven to Minchester,”