Domestic fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Wales -- Fiction
For there was a change, not only in his mind, but in his declared
intentions. Llanfeare had belonged to Indefer Joneses for many
generations. When the late Squire had died, now twenty years ago,
there had been remaining out of ten children only one, the eldest,
to whom the property now belonged. Four or five coming in succession
after him had died without issue. Then there had been a Henry Jones,
who had gone away and married, had become the father of the Henry
Jones above mentioned, and had then also departed. The youngest, a
daughter, had married an attorney named Brodrick, and she also had
died, having no other child but Isabel. Mr Brodrick had married
again, and was now the father of a large family, living at Hereford,
where he carried on his business. He was not very "well-to-do" in the
world. The new Mrs Brodrick had preferred her own babies to Isabel,
and Isabel when she was fifteen years of age had gone to her bachelor
uncle at Llanfeare. There she had lived for the last ten years,
making occasional visits to her father at Hereford.
Mr Indefer Jones, who was now between seventy and eighty years old,
was a gentleman who through his whole life had been disturbed by
reflections, fears, and hopes as to the family property on which he
had been born, on which he had always lived, in possession of which
he would certainly die, and as to the future disposition of which
it was his lot in life to be altogether responsible. It had been
entailed upon him before his birth in his grandfather's time, when
his father was about to be married. But the entail had not been
carried on. There had come no time in which this Indefer Jones had
been about to be married, and the former old man having been given to
extravagance, and been generally in want of money, had felt it more
comfortable to be without an entail. His son had occasionally been
induced to join with him in raising money. Thus not only since he had
himself owned the estate, but before his father's death, there had
been forced upon him reflections as to the destination of Llanfeare.
At fifty he had found himself unmarried, and unlikely to marry.
His brother Henry was then alive; but Henry had disgraced the
family,--had run away with a married woman whom he had married after
a divorce, had taken to race courses and billiard-rooms, and had been
altogether odious to his brother Indefer. Nevertheless the boy which
had come from this marriage, a younger Henry, had been educated at
his expense, and had occasionally been received at Llanfeare. He
had been popular with no one there, having been found to be a sly
boy, given to lying, and, as even the servants said about the place,
unlike a Jones of Llanfeare. Then had come the time in which Isabel
had been brought to Llanfeare. Henry had been sent away from Oxford
for some offence not altogether trivial, and the Squire had declared
to himself and others that Llanfeare should never fall into his
hands.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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