“Ah, I suppose so: though you seem to vegetate pretty much in the old ways. Those children though, for instance,” said Randolph, with a laugh, “scurrying off in such haste as we came within hearing, that is not like the old ways. Are you ashamed of them, or afraid to have them here? I should not wonder, for my part.” The tears sprang to Mary’s eyes. She did not say anything in the sudden shock, but looked at Randolph piteously with a silent reproach. It was the first time since the day of their arrival that any public mention had been made of the children in her father’s presence. And there was a pause which seemed to her full of fate. “You must not look at me so,” said her brother. “I gave you fair warning. My father is not to be given up to your plots without a remonstrance at least. I believe it is a conspiracy, sir, from beginning to end. Do you intend our old family, with all the honours you are so proud of, to drop into disgrace? With the shadow of crime on it,” cried Randolph, warming into excitement; then, with a dull perception of something still more telling, his father’s weak point, “and the bar sinister of vice?” he said. CHAPTER XVI. DUCKS AND DRAKES. The Squire made use of that discretion which is the better part of valour. When Randolph for the second time insisted upon coming to an understanding on family affairs, which meant deciding what was to be done on the Squire’s death, Mr. Musgrave, not knowing how else to foil his son, got up and came away. “You can settle these matters with Mary,” he said, quietly enough. It would not have been dignified to treat the suggestion in any other way. But he went out with a slight acceleration of his pulses, caused half by anger and half by the natural human thrill of feeling with which a man has his own death brought home to him. The Squire knew that there was nothing unnatural in this anticipation of his own end. He was aware that it required to be done, and the emergency prepared for; but yet it was not agreeable to him. He thought they might have awaited the event, although in another point of view it would have been imprudent to await the event. He felt that there was something undesirable, unlovely, in the idea of your children consulting over you for their own comfort “afterwards.” But then his children were no longer children whose doings touched his affections much--they were middle-aged people, as old as he was--and in fact it _was_ important that they should come to an arrangement and settle everything. Only he could not--and this being so, would not--do it; and he said to himself that the cause of his refusal was no reluctance on his own part to consider the inevitable certainty of his own death, but only the intolerableness of the inquiry in other respects. He walked out in a little strain and excitement of feeling, though outwardly his calm was intense. He steadied himself, mind and body, by an effort, putting a smile upon his