"This second Richard became in time a highly successful physician, a
man honored and beloved by this community. There was no wildness in
_him_, nor in his son, the third Richard. His granddaughter Sarah
Hynds married Professor Doctor Max Jelnik, the celebrated Viennese
alienist, whom she met abroad. Your next-door neighbor is Sarah's
son, born somewhere in Hungary, I believe. Both the young man's
parents are dead, and I understand he has led a vagrant and
irresponsible life, preferring to rove about rather than follow his
father's profession, to which he was educated.
"My late client, indeed, held that he had inherited the deplorable
characteristics of the first Richard. She asserted--she allowed
herself great freedom of speech--that you can't make a silk purse
out of a sow's ear. It displeased her that he should come to
Hyndsville. She thought it showed a malignant nature and a peculiar
shamelessness that he chose to reside next door to Hynds House, from
which his great-great-grandfather had been so ignominously driven.
Her first meeting with the young man bred in her an ineradicable
dislike."
Now what really happened is this: The fences having been neglected,
and in consequence fallen down, and the hedge broken in many places,
Mr. Jelnik, just come to Hyndsville, thoughtlessly and perhaps
ignorantly crossed the sacred Scarlett boundaries. Up-stairs behind
her blind, like an ancient spider in her web, the old lady spied
him. She flung open the window and leaned out.
"Who are you that prowl about other peoples' yards like a thievish
cat?" she demanded peremptorily.
The young man looked up, uncovering his beautiful head.
"I am Nicholas Jelnik. And I pray your pardon, Madame: I did not
mean to intrude," and he made as if to go.
"Jelnik!" said she, in a hoarse and croaking voice. "Jelnik! Aha! I
know your breed! I smell the blood in you--bad blood! rotten bad
blood! You've a bad face, young man: a scoundrelly face, the face of
a fellow whose grandfather robbed his house and shamed his name! And
why have you come near Hynds House, at this hour of the day? He, he,
he! _I_ know, _I_ know!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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