ely, "we hev had a lot of
talk and I don't mind if I do, and as for that there parson, begging
his pardon, I wish he would mind his own affairs and leave me to mind
mine."

CHAPTER XIII

ABOUT ART

Edward Cossey drove from the Castle in a far from happy frame of mind.
To begin with, the Squire and his condescending way of doing business
irritated him very much, so much that once or twice in the course of
the conversation he was within an ace of breaking the whole thing off,
and only restrained himself with difficulty from doing so. As it was,
notwithstanding all the sacrifices and money risks which he was
undergoing to take up these mortgages, and they were very considerable
even to a man of his great prospects, he felt that he had been placed
in the position of a person who receives a favour rather than of a
person who grants one. Moreover there was an assumption of superiority
about the old man, a visible recognition of the gulf which used to be
fixed between the gentleman of family and the man of business who has
grown rich by trading in money and money's worth, which was the more
galling because it was founded on actual fact, and Edward Cossey knew
it. All his foibles and oddities notwithstanding, it would have been
impossible for any person of discernment to entertain a comparison
between the half-ruined Squire and the young banker, who would shortly
be worth between half a million and a million sterling. The former was
a representative, though a somewhat erratic one, of all that is best
in the old type of Englishmen of gentle blood, which is now so rapidly
vanishing, and of the class to which to a large extent this country
owes her greatness. His very eccentricities were wandering lights that
showed unsuspected heights and depths in his character--love of
country and his country's honour, respect for the religion of his
fathers, loyalty of mind and valour for the right. Had he lived in
other times, like some of the old Boisseys and de la Molles, who were
at Honham before him, he would probably have died in the Crusades or
at Cressy, or perhaps more uselessly, for his King at Marston Moor, or
like that last but one of the true de la Molles, kneeling in the
courtyard of his Castle and defying his enemies to wring his secret
from him. Now few such opportunities are left to men of his stamp, and
they are, perhaps as a consequence, dying out of an age wh