So it was with feelings of an extremely mingled and doubtful character that she proceeded with her arrangements for the birthday _fête_, which, to tell the truth, Mr Summerhayes had strongly opposed—he could not very well have told why. Charley was the heir of the estate—as indisputable as if his father had been still its master; yet there was a great difference; and perhaps the stepfather did not feel himself quite equal to the necessary speeches, nor to the cordiality which would be required of him on such a day. Mr Summerhayes had managed everything so completely in his own way—he had felt the house so entirely his own these five years, which yet was not his own, nor vested in him by any natural right—that the idea of acknowledging as much virtually, if not in distinct words, by this public recognition of the heir, galled him strangely. He would rather have gone out of the way; but as he could not go out of the way, he adopted, half unconsciously, the only mode that remained of making himself disagreeable—he found out that possible flaw in the deed. Probably nothing further was in his thoughts than to express the discontent in his mind, and throw a little shadow of insecurity upon the festivities which were sacred to the too-confident heir. Like an ill-tempered father keeping up his power by a vague threat of altering his will, Mr Summerhayes waved his threatening flag over the heads of the family at Fontanel by this faint cloud of suspicion thrown upon the invincible certainty of the deed. He meant nothing more; but evil thoughts are suggestive, and have a wonderful power of cumulation. Perhaps he did mean something more before old Gateshead, whom, on other occasions, he did not hesitate to call an old fogy, was disembarked from his old-fashioned chaise at the door, two days before Charley’s birthday. The firm was Gateshead and Gateshead—but Europe and Asia are not more unlike than were its two members. The elder was, as Mr Summerhayes succinctly expressed it, an old fogy—the other, an acute and tolerably accomplished young man of the world. Mr Courtenay Gateshead, in ordinary cases, was Mr Summerhayes’s favourite, and was honoured with his confidence; but on this special occasion old Mr Gateshead—whose acuteness was somewhat blunted by age—who was a wonderful gossip and genealogist, and who had the most profound respect for the superior legal knowledge of the master of Fontanel, who had once been of the Inner Temple—was, as an old friend of the family, the selected guest.