"Yes," said Lady Lansmere. "But to suppose that this profligate foreigner could carry away a girl like Violante, against her will--a man she has never seen, and whom she must have been taught to hate!" "Be on your guard, nevertheless, I pray you, madam: where there's a will there's a way." Randal took his leave, and returned to Madame di Negra's. He staid with her an hour, revisited the Count, and then strolled to Limmer's. "Randal," said the Squire, who looked pale and worn, but who scorned to confess the weakness with which he still grieved and yearned for his rebellious son: "Randal, you have nothing now to do in London; can you come and stay with me, and take to farming? I remember that you showed a good deal of sound knowledge about thin sowing." "My dear sir, I will come to you as soon as the general election is over." "What the deuce have you got to do with the general election?" "Mr. Egerton has some wish that I should enter Parliament; indeed, negotiations for that purpose are now on foot." The Squire shook his head. "I don't like my half-brother's politics." "I shall be quite independent of them," cried Randal, loftily; "that independence is the condition for which I stipulate." "Glad to hear it; and if you do come into Parliament, I hope you'll not turn your back on the land?" "Turn my back on the land!" cried Randal, with devout horror. "Oh, sir, I am not so unnatural!" "That's the right way to put it," quoth the credulous Squire; "it is unnatural! It is turning one's back on one's own mother! The land is a mother--" "To those who live by her, certainly--a mother," said Randal, gravely. "And though, indeed, my father starves by her rather than lives, and Rood Hall is not like Hazeldean, still--I--" "Hold your tongue," interrupted the Squire; "I want to talk to you. Your grandmother was a Hazeldean." "Her picture is in the drawing-room at Rood. People think me very like her!" "Indeed!" said the Squire. "The Hazeldeans are generally inclined to be stout and rosy, which you are certainly not. But no fault of yours. We are all as Heaven made us! However, to the point. I am going to alter my will--(said with a choking gulp.) This is the rough draft for the lawyers to work upon." "Pray--pray, sir, do not speak to me on such a subject. I can not bear to contemplate even the possibility of--of--" "My death! Ha, ha! Nonsense. My own son calculated on the date of it by the insurance tables. Ha, ha, ha. A very fashionable son--Eh! Ha, ha!" "Poor Frank, do not let him suffer for a momentary forgetfulness of right feeling. When he comes to be married to that foreign lady, and be a father himself, he--" "Father himself!" burst forth the Squire. "Father to a swarm of sallow-faced Popish tadpoles! No foreign frogs shall hop about my grave in Hazeldean church-yard. No, no. But you need not look so reproachful--I am not going to disinherit Frank."