enty-four hours
ago he had thought that instead of needing to know what he should do,
he should by this time know that he needed to do nothing: that he
should hunt in pink, have a first-rate hunter, ride to cover on a fine
hack, and be generally respected for doing so; moreover, that he should
be able at once to pay Mr. Garth, and that Mary could no longer have
any reason for not marrying him. And all this was to have come without
study or other inconvenience, purely by the favor of providence in the
shape of an old gentleman's caprice. But now, at the end of the
twenty-four hours, all those firm expectations were upset. It was
"rather hard lines" that while he was smarting under this
disappointment he should be treated as if he could have helped it. But
he went away silently and his mother pleaded for him.

"Don't be hard on the poor boy, Vincy. He'll turn out well yet, though
that wicked man has deceived him. I feel as sure as I sit here, Fred
will turn out well--else why was he brought back from the brink of the
grave? And I call it a robbery: it was like giving him the land, to
promise it; and what is promising, if making everybody believe is not
promising? And you see he did leave him ten thousand pounds, and then
took it away again."

"Took it away again!" said Mr. Vincy, pettishly. "I tell you the lad's
an unlucky lad, Lucy. And you've always spoiled him."

"Well, Vincy, he was my first, and you made a fine fuss with him when
he came. You were as proud as proud," said Mrs. Vincy, easily
recovering her cheerful smile.

"Who knows what babies will turn to? I was fool enough, I dare say,"
said the husband--more mildly, however.

"But who has handsomer, better children than ours? Fred is far beyond
other people's sons: you may hear it in his speech, that he has kept
college company. And Rosamond--where is there a girl like her? She
might stand beside any lady in the land, and only look the better for
it. You see--Mr. Lydgate has kept the highest company and been
everywhere, and he fell in love with her at once. Not but what I could
have wished Rosamond had not engaged herself. She might have met
somebody on a visit who would have been a far better match; I mean at
her schoolfellow Miss Willoughby's. There are relations in that family
quite as high as Mr. Lydgate's."

"Damn relations!" said Mr. Vincy; "I've had enough of them. I don't
want a son-in-law who has got nothing but his relations to