s be a divorce with custody of
the child. He wondered a little that they had remained quiet so long.
There had been American shrewdness in her coming boldly to Stornham to
look over the ground herself and actually set the place in order. It did
not present itself to his mind that what she had done had been no part
of a scheme, but the mere result of her temperament and training. He
told himself that it had been planned beforehand and carried out in
hard-headed commercial American fashion as a matter of business. The
thing which most enraged him was the implied cool, practical realisation
of the fact that he, as inheritor of an entailed estate, was but owner
in charge, and not young enough to be regarded as an insurmountable
obstacle to their plans. He could not undo the greater part of what had
been done, and they were calculating, he argued, that his would not be
likely to be a long life, and if--if anything happened--Stornham would
be Ughtred's and the whole vulgar lot of them would come over and take
possession and swagger about the place as if they had been born on it.
As to divorce or separation--if they took that line, he would at least
give them a good run for their money. They would wish they had let
sleeping dogs lie before the thing was over. The right kind of lawyer
could bully Rosalie into saying anything he chose on the witness-stand.
There was not much limit to the evidence a man could bring if he was
experienced enough to be circumstantial, and knew whom he was dealing
with. The very fact that the little fool could be made to appear to have
been so sly and sanctimonious would stir the gall of any jury of men.
His own condoning the matter for the sake of his sensitive boy, deformed
by his mother's unrestrained and violent hysteria before his birth,
would go a long way. Let them get their divorce, they would have paid
for it, the whole lot of them, the beautiful Miss Vanderpoel and
all. Such a story as the newspapers would revel in would not be
a recommendation to Englishmen of unsmirched reputation. Then his
exultation would suddenly drop as his mental excitement produced its
effect of inevitable physical fatigue. Even if he made them pay for
getting their own way, what would happen to himself afterwards? No
morbid vanity of self-bolstering could make the outlook anything
but unpromising. If he had not had such diabolical luck in his few
investments he could have lived his own life. As it was, old Vanderpoel