A Family and a Fortune Read Free Page B

you all to open your eyes. I have made my discovery and will stick to it.’
    â€˜I have always thought they were alike,’ said Blanche.
    â€˜Oh, now, Mother, that is not at all on the line. You know it has only occurred to you at this moment.’
    â€˜No, I am bound to say’, said Edgar, definite in the interests of justice, ‘that I have heard your mother point out a resemblance.’
    â€˜Then dear little Mother, she has got in first, and I am the last person to grudge her the credit. So you see it, Mother? Because I am certain of it, certain. I should almost have thought that Uncle would see it himself.’
    â€˜We can hardly expect him to call attention to it,’ said Clement.
    â€˜I am aware of it,’ said Dudley, ‘and I invite the attention of you all.’
    â€˜Then I am a laggard and see things last instead of first.
    â€˜But I am none the less interested in them. My interest does not depend upon personal triumph. It is a much more genuine and independent thing.’
    â€˜Mine is feebler, I admit,’ said Mark.
    â€˜Now, Mother, you will have a rest this morning to make up for your poor night. And I will drive the house on its course. You can be quite at ease.’
    Justine put her hand against her mother’s cheek, and Blanche lifted her own hand and held it for a moment, smiling at her daughter.
    â€˜What a dear, good girl she is!’ she said, as the latter left them. ‘What should we do without her?’
    â€˜What we do now,’ said Clement.
    â€˜Indeed we should not,’ said his mother, rounding on him at once. ‘We should find everything entirely different, as you know quite well.’
    â€˜Indeed, indeed,’ said Edgar in a deliberate voice. ‘Indeed.’
    Edgar and Blanche had fallen in love thirty-one years before, in the year eighteen hundred and seventy, when Edgar was twenty-four and Blanche thirty; and now that the feeling was a memory, and a rare and even embarrassing one, Blanche regarded her husband with trust and pride, and Edgar his wife with compassionate affection. It meant little that neither was ever disloyal to the other, for neither was capable of disloyalty. They had come to be rather shy of each other and were little together by day or night. It was hard to imagine how their shyness had ever been enough in abeyance to allow of their courtship and marriage, and they found it especially the case. They could only remember, and this they did as seldom as they could. Blanche seemed to wander aloof through her life, finding enough to live for in the members of her family and in her sense of pride and possession in each, it was typical of her that she regarded Dudley as a brother, and had no jealousy of her husband’s relation with him.
    Edgar’s life was largely in his brother and the friendship which dated from their infancy. Mark helped his father in his halting and efficient management of the estate, and as the eldest son had been given no profession. Clement hadgained a fellowship at Cambridge with a view to being a scholar and a don. Each brother had a faint compassion and contempt for the other’s employment and prospect.
    â€˜Mother dear,’ said Justine, returning to the room, ‘here is a letter which came for you last night and which you have not opened. There is a way to discharge your duties! I suggest that you remedy the omission.’
    Blanche held the letter at arm’s length to read the address, while she felt for her glasses.
    â€˜It is from your grandfather,’ she said, adjusting the glasses and looking at her daughter over them. ‘It is from my father, Edgar. It is so seldom that he writes himself. Of course, he is getting an old man. He must soon begin to feel his age.’
    â€˜Probably fairly soon, as he is eighty-seven,’ said Clement.
    â€˜Too obvious once again, Clement,’ said Justine. ‘Open the letter, Mother. You should have