lling resolved to give a
harvest-home to his tenants, and under the protection of the occasion
to invite also a good many of his neighbors and of the townsfolk of
Testbridge, whom he could not well ask to dinner: there happened to be
a political expediency for something of the sort: America is not the
only country in which ambition opens the door to mean doings on the
part of such as count themselves gentlemen. Not a few on whom Lady
Margaret had never called, and whom she would never in any way
acknowledge again, were invited; nor did the knowledge of what it meant
cause many of them to decline the questionable honor--which fact
carried in it the best justification of which the meanness and insult
were capable. Mrs. Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their
case Lady Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey
positively refused to accompany them. He would not be patronized, he
said; "--and by an inferior," he added to himself.

Mr. Mortimer was the illiterate son of a literary father who had reaped
both money and fame. The son spent the former, on the strength of the
latter married an earl's daughter, and thereupon began to embody in his
own behavior his ideas of how a nobleman ought to carry himself;
whence, from being only a small, he became an objectionable man, and
failed of being amusing by making himself offensive. He had never
manifested the least approach to neighborliness with Godfrey, although
their houses were almost within a stone's throw of each other. Had
Wardour been an ordinary farmer, of whose presuming on the acquaintance
there could have been no danger, Mortimer would doubtless have behaved
differently; but as Wardour had some pretensions--namely, old family, a
small, though indeed _very_ small, property of his own, a university
education, good horses, and the habits and manners of a gentleman--the
men scarcely even saluted when they met. The Mortimer ladies, indeed,
had more than once remarked--but it was in solemn silence, each to
herself only--how well the man sat, and how easily he handled the
hunter he always rode; but not once until now had so much as a greeting
passed between them and Mrs. Wardour. It was not therefore wonderful
that Godfrey should not choose to accept their invitation. Finding,
however, that his mother was distressed at having to go to the
gathering without him, and far more exercised in her mind than was
needful as to what would be thought of hi