“But it was a dreadful thing to do; to buy her off! If you will think of it, papa, and think who she was, the girl whom Arthur _loved_. It does not matter,” cried Lucy with generous heat, “that we do not like her or approve of her. Arthur loved her; and this girl whom he loved so much, whom he thought more of than any one in the world, to be bought off!” “Ay, that’s it,” said Sir John, “it would have all gone on smoothly if he had not broke in with his high flown ideas just like you; the thing would have been done but for that; and he would have been clear of her. But now that it’s come to this he shall have what he wants, and he shall have what he’s entitled to. I will see Rolt to-morrow,” said Sir John, never changing the dull fixedness of his eyes. And it may be supposed that the remainder of the evening was not very cheerful. Lady Curtis locked both the letters up in a drawer of her writing-table. “It is a pity they should be separated, these two,” she said with that quivering smile of scorn which is so bitter, more painful than weeping. Yes, this was what all their hopes had come to. Arthur her boy, had chosen his own path, and this was what it was, nothing in which his father or mother had any share. What he liked better was the coarse girl who had married him for all the advantages he brought in his hand, and who had infatuated him, and made him such a one as herself. The sense of failure was in Lady Curtis’s mind, the pang of feeling that something inferior had been preferred to her, and to all that was worthy, by her boy. Can anything be more terrible than when father or mother is driven to despise the child of their bosoms? It happens often enough, and there is no such pang on earth. With trembling hands and this miserable quiver of a smile on her lip, she locked them away. Now surely it was time that they should rouse themselves, shake off the dull misery for Arthur’s loss which had paralysed the house, and brood no more over the desertion of one so unworthy their love. “We have enough of this,” she said, “come, Lucy! I do not mean that your life should be spent in sackcloth because Arthur is unworthy. Because he is hobnobbing with the tax-collector, are there to be no cakes and ale in Oakley? We will send our invitations to-morrow,” she said with a mocking little laugh of pain. Sir John opened his eyes a little at the levity of this unintelligible phrase about cakes and ale. But he had long ceased to criticise my lady whatever she might do or say. She had odd ways of expressing herself sometimes, but she was always to be trusted in the main points.