Lady Sarah was a woman who allowed no difficulty to
crush her. She did not expect the world to be very easy. She went on
with her constant needle, trying to comfort her mother as she worked.
At this time the Marchioness had almost brought herself to quarrel with
her younger son, and would say very hard things about him and about the
Dean. She had more than once said that Mary was a "nasty sly thing,"
and had expressed herself as greatly aggrieved by that marriage. All
this came of course from the Marquis, and was known by her daughters to
come from the Marquis; and yet the Marchioness had never as yet been
allowed to see either her daughter-in-law or Popenjoy.

On the following day her son came to her when the three sisters were at
church in the afternoon. On these occasions he would stay for a quarter
of an hour, and would occupy the greater part of the time in abusing
the Dean and Lord George. But on this day she could not refrain from
asking him a question. "Are you going up to London, Brotherton?"

"What makes you ask?"

"Because they tell me so. Sarah says that the servants are talking
about it."

"I wish Sarah had something to do better than listening to the
servants?"

"But you are going?"

"If you want to know, I believe we shall go up to town for a few days.
Popenjoy ought to see a dentist, and I want to do a few things. Why the
deuce shouldn't I go up to London as well as any one else?"

"Of course, if you wish it."

"To tell you the truth, I don't much wish anything, except to get out
of this cursed country again."

"Don't say that, Brotherton. You are an Englishman."

"I am ashamed to say I am. I wish with all my heart that I had been
born a Chinese or a Red Indian." This he said, not in furtherance of
any peculiar cosmopolitan proclivities, but because the saying of it
would vex his mother. "What am I to think of the country, when the
moment I get here I am hounded by all my own family because I choose to
live after my own fashion and not after theirs?"

"I haven't hounded you."

"No. You might possibly get more by being on good terms with me than
bad. And so might they if they knew it. I'll be even with Master George
before I've done with him; and I'll be even with that parson, too, who
still smells of the stables. I'll lead him a dance that will about ruin
him. And as for his daughter----"

"It wasn't I got up the marriage, Brotherton."

"I don't care who got it up. But I can have enqui