never leave
me--not till--not till--oh, my boy, have they told you I am dying?" She
wept bitterly, and buried her head in her pillow.

CHAPTER LXXXIII

Joey and Charlotte were in the room. Joey was now ordained, and was
curate to Theobald. He and Ernest had never been sympathetic, and Ernest
saw at a glance that there was no chance of a _rapprochement_ between
them. He was a little startled at seeing Joey dressed as a clergyman,
and looking so like what he had looked himself a few years earlier, for
there was a good deal of family likeness between the pair; but Joey's
face was cold and was illumined with no spark of Bohemianism; he was a
clergyman and was going to do as other clergymen did, neither better nor
worse. He greeted Ernest rather _de haut en bas_, that is to say he
began by trying to do so, but the affair tailed off unsatisfactorily.

His sister presented her cheek to him to be kissed. How he hated it; he
had been dreading it for the last three hours. She, too, was distant and
reproachful in her manner, as such a superior person was sure to be. She
had a grievance against him inasmuch as she was still unmarried. She
laid the blame of this at Ernest's door; it was his misconduct she
maintained in secret, which had prevented young men from making offers to
her, and she ran him up a heavy bill for consequential damages. She and
Joey had from the first developed an instinct for hunting with the
hounds, and now these two had fairly identified themselves with the older
generation--that is to say as against Ernest. On this head there was an
offensive and defensive alliance between them, but between themselves
there was subdued but internecine warfare.

This at least was what Ernest gathered, partly from his recollections of
the parties concerned, and partly from his observation of their little
ways during the first half-hour after his arrival, while they were all
together in his mother's bedroom--for as yet of course they did not know
that he had money. He could see that they eyed him from time to time
with a surprise not unmixed with indignation, and knew very well what
they were thinking.

Christina saw the change which had come over him--how much firmer and
more vigorous both in mind and body he seemed than when she had last seen
him. She saw too how well he was dressed, and, like the others, in spite
of the return of all her affection for her first-born, was a little
alarmed about Theob