rse they're in; they're always
in." Lady Alice, however, feeling that she had done her duty, and not
wishing to take the place by storm, had herself driven back to
Brotherton.

On the following Sunday afternoon the Marquis came, according to his
promise, and found his mother alone. "The fact is, mother," he said,
"you have got a regular church set around you during the last year or
two, and I will have nothing to do with them. I never cared much for
Brotherton Close, and now I like it less than ever." The Marchioness
moaned and looked up into his face imploringly. She was anxious to say
something in defence, at any rate, of her daughter's marriage, but
specially anxious to say nothing that should not anger him. Of course
he was unreasonable, but, according to her lights, he, being the
Marquis, had a right to be unreasonable. "The Dean came to me the other
day," continued he, "and I could see at a glance that he meant to be
quite at home in the house, if I didn't put him down."

"You'll see Mr. Holdenough, won't you? Mr. Holdenough is a very
gentlemanlike man, and the Holdenoughs were always quite county people.
You used to like Alice."

"If you ask me, I think she has been a fool at her age to go and marry
an old parson. As for receiving him, I shan't receive anybody,--in the
way of entertaining them. I haven't come home for that purpose. My
child will have to live here when he is a man."

"God bless him!" said the Marchioness.

"Or at any rate his property will be here. They tell me that it will be
well that he should be used to this damnable climate early in life. He
will have to go to school here, and all that. So I have brought him,
though I hate the place."

"It is so nice to have you back, Brotherton."

"I don't know about its being nice. I don't find much niceness in it.
Had I not got myself married I should never have come back. But it's as
well that you all should know that there is an heir."

"God bless him!" said the Marchioness, again. "But don't you think that
we ought to see him?"

"See him! Why?" He asked the question sharply, and looked at her with
that savageness in his eyes which all the family remembered so well,
and which she specially feared.

That question of the legitimacy of the boy had never been distinctly
discussed at Cross Hall, and the suspicious hints on the subject which
had passed between the sisters, the allusions to this and the other
possibility which had escaped them, had