"I don't suppose it will have any effect with you;--but it is something you ought to know. If any man of my age can be supposed to have made up his mind on such a matter, you may believe that I have made up my mind that I will--never marry." "What nonsense, Lord Scroope." "Well;--yes; perhaps it is. But I am so convinced of it myself that I shall ask my brother to come and live here--permanently,--as master of the place. As he would have to leave his regiment it would of course be necessary that his position here should be settled,--and it shall be settled." "I most sincerely hope that you will always live here yourself." "It won't suit me. Circumstances have made it impossible. If he will not do so, nor my aunt, the house must be shut up. I am most anxious that this should not be done. I shall implore him to remain here, and to be here exactly as I should have been,--had things with me not have been so very unfortunate. He will at any rate have a house to offer you, if--" "Lord Scroope!" "I know what you are going to say, Sophie." "I don't know that I am as yet disposed to marry for the sake of a house to shelter me." "Of course you would say that; but still I think that I have been right to tell you. I am sure you will believe my assurance that Jack knows nothing of all this." That same evening he said nearly the same thing to his brother, though in doing so he made no special allusion to Sophie Mellerby. "I know that there is a great deal that a fellow should do, living in such a house as this, but I am not the man to do it. It's a very good kind of life, if you happen to be up to it. I am not, but you are." "My dear Fred, you can't change the accidents of birth." "In a great measure I can; or at least we can do so between us. You can't be Lord Scroope, but you can be master of Scroope Manor." "No I can't;--and, which is more, I won't. Don't think I am uncivil." "You are uncivil, Jack." "At any rate I am not ungrateful. I only want you to understand thoroughly that such an arrangement is out of the question. In no condition of life would I care to be the locum tenens for another man. You are now five or six and twenty. At thirty you may be a married man with an absolute need for your own house." "I would execute any deed." "So that I might be enabled to keep the owner of the property out of the only place that is fit for him! It is a power which I should not use, and do not wish to possess. Believe me, Fred, that a man is bound to submit himself to the circumstances by which he is surrounded, when it is clear that they are beneficial to the world at large. There must be an Earl of Scroope, and you at present are the man."