t's little dinner had been
unsuccessful; but Ralph Newton, as he went back to London, was almost
disposed to think that Providence had interposed to save him.

"I'll tell you what it is, father," said Polly to her papa, as soon
as the two visitors had left the house, "if that's the way you are
going to go on, I'll never marry anybody as long as I live."

"My dear, it was all your mother," said Mr. Neefit. "Now wasn't it
all your mother? I wish she'd been blowed fust!"

CHAPTER X.

SIR THOMAS IN HIS CHAMBERS.

It will be remembered that Sir Thomas Underwood had declined to
give his late ward any advice at that interview which took place in
Southampton Buildings;--or rather that the only advice which he had
given to the young man was to cut his throat. The idle word had left
no impression on Ralph Newton;--but still it had been spoken, and
was remembered by Sir Thomas. When he was left alone after the young
man's departure he was very unhappy. It was not only that he had
spoken a word so idle when he ought to have been grave and wise, but
that he felt that he had been altogether remiss in his duty as guide,
philosopher, and friend. There were old sorrows, too, on this score.
In the main Sir Thomas had discharged well a most troublesome,
thankless, and profitless duty towards the son of a man who had not
been related to him, and with whom an accidental intimacy had been
ripened into friendship by letter rather than by social intercourse.
Ralph Newton's father had been the younger brother of the present
Gregory Newton, of Newton Priory, and had been the parson of the
parish of Peele Newton,--as was now Ralph's younger brother, Gregory.
The present squire of Newton had been never married, and the
property, as has before been said, had been settled on Ralph, as the
male heir,--provided, of course, that his uncle left no legitimate
son of his own. It had come to pass that the two brothers, Gregory
and Ralph, had quarrelled about matters of property, and had not
spoken for years before the death of the younger. Ralph at this time
had been just old enough to be brought into the quarrel. There had
been questions of cutting timber and of leases, as to which the
parson, acting on his son's behalf, had opposed the Squire with much
unnecessary bitterness and suspicion. And it was doubtless the case
that the Squire resented bitterly an act done by his own father
with the view of perpetuating the property in the true line