Mr. Woodburn saw with indignation the destruction of these hedges and trees, the wide, bare gap in the general beauty of the landscape thus created, and his feelings were partaken by many others of the neighbouring country and town, who denounced Mr. Drury as a Goth, and hoped there would be no imitators of this unloveable sort of thrift. Mr. Woodburn could not restrain himself, on the next visit of Elizabeth Drury, from speaking in a sarcastically jeering manner of this frightful system, as he called it, of her father. Elizabeth, to whose ideas of beauty it was as great an outrage as to Mr. Woodburn’s, burst into tears; and Mrs. Woodburn intreated her husband to desist, saying, that Miss Drury was not responsible for the acts of her father, and did all in her power, by affectionate kindness, to make Elizabeth forget it. Mr. Woodburn’s own natural goodness of heart caused him to express his regret for having hurt her feelings, and adding that certainly Elizabeth must as much regret it as he did. But there was a poisoned arrow fixed into her sensitive heart, which nothing could effectually extract. She had begged and entreated that the but thinly scattered trees on the farm might be spared, but in vain. She witnessed their fall with grief, which she could not conceal, and had thus incurred a considerable degree of anger from her father. She had heard the mortifying remarks of the Heritages and other friends; but the ground of painful feeling and of comment which it had laid in the mind of all the Woodburns, and especially of Mr. Woodburn, was a source of real unhappiness. She felt afraid to go to the Grange when Mr. Woodburn was in the house, and when she did meet him there, or elsewhere, she thought he looked coldly on her. She was conscious that her very presence brought to his mind this piece of Vandalism—the blot on the face of the country, as he termed it. She heard of his by no means measured remarks upon it amongst his neighbours; for though a quiet and courteous man, he was strong in his feelings. George never alluded to the subject in her company, and never omitted one of his usual visits to the farm. He even sat and heard Mr. Drury’s conversation on the subject, for nothing could prevent him continually introducing it, and remained passive, and making but now and then an incidental reply, endeavouring to divert the discussion to something more agreeable to the ladies. But nothing could turn Mr. Trant Drury long. He would say, “Well, I find my plans don’t meet with the approbation of my neighbours, eh? They would like all to live in a wood, and pay rent, where they do pay rent, for growing their landlord’s timber. Ah! they shall see in a while! They shall see by my rick-yards how the matter stands.”