Some two or three years before the commencement of this story
there arose a difference between the manager of the property and
Lady Ushant, and she was made to understand, after some
half-courteous manner, that Bragton house and park would do better
without her. There would be no longer any cows kept, and painters
must come into the house, and there were difficulties about fuel.
She was not turned out exactly; but she went and established
herself in lonely lodgings at Cheltenham. Then Mary Masters, who
had lived for more than a dozen years at Bragton, went back to her
father's house in Dillsborough.
Any reader with an aptitude for family pedigrees will now
understand that Reginald, Master of Hoppet Hall, was first cousin
to the father of the Foreign Office paragon, and that he is
therefore the paragon's first cousin once removed. The relationship
is not very distant, but the two men, one of whom was a dozen years
older than the other, had not seen each other for more than twenty
years,--at a time when one of them was a big boy, and the other a
very little one; and during the greater part of that time a lawsuit
had been carried on between them in a very rigorous manner. It had
done much to injure both, and had created such a feeling of
hostility that no intercourse of any kind now existed between them.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30