The Grand Sophy Read Free

Ombersley unhappily. “We cannot but be sensible of it.”
    “Damn his impudence!” said Sir Horace, himself a father. “What’s he done?”
    “Well, Horace, you might not know it, because you are always abroad, but poor Ombersley had a great many debts.”
    “Everyone knows that! Never knew him when he wasn’t under a cloud! You’re not going to tell me the boy was fool enough to settle ’em?”
    “But, Horace, someone had to settle them!” she protested. “You can have no notion how difficult things were becoming! And with the younger boys to establish creditably, and the dear girls— It is no wonder that Charles should be so anxious that Cecilia should make a good match!”
    “Providing for the whole pack, is he? More fool he! What about the mortgages? If the greater part of Ombersley’s inheritance had not been entailed he would have gambled the whole away long since!”
    “I do not properly understand entails,” said his sister, “but I am afraid that Charles did not behave just as he should over it. Ombersley was very much displeased, though I shall always say that to call one’s first-born a serpent’s tooth is to use quite unbecoming language! It seems that when Charles came of age he might have made everything quite easy for his poor papa, if only he had been in the least degree obliging! But nothing would prevail upon him to agree to break the entail, so all was at a standstill, and one cannot blame Ombersley for being vexed! And then that odious old man died.”
    “When?” demanded Sir Horace. “How comes it that I never heard a word of this before today?”
    “It was rather more than two years ago, and—”
    “That accounts for it, then. I was devilish busy, dealing with Angouleme, and all that set. Must have happened at the time of Toulouse, I dare swear. But when I saw you last year you never spoke a word, Lizzie!”
    She was stung by the injustice of this, and said indignantly, “I am sure I don’t know how I should have been thinking of such paltry things, with that Monster at large, and the Champs de Mars, and the banks suspending payment, and heaven knows what beside! And you coming over from Brussels without a word of warning, and sitting with me a bare twenty minutes! My head was in a whirl, and if I answered you to the point it is more than I would have bargained for!”
    Sir Horace, disregarding this irrelevancy, said, with what for him was strong feeling, “Outrageous! I don’t say Ombersley’s not a shocking loose screw, because there’s no sense in wrapping plain facts up in clean linen, but to be cutting a man out of one’s will and setting up his son to lord it over him, which I’ll be bound he does!”
    “No, no!” expostulated Lady Ombersley feebly. “Charles is fully sensible of what is due to his father! It is not that he is ever lacking in respect, I do assure you! Only poor Ombersley cannot but feel it a little, now that Charles has taken everything into his own hands.”
    “A pretty state of affairs!”
    “Yes, but one comfort is that it is not generally known. And I cannot deny that in some ways it is by far more pleasant. You would scarcely credit it, Horace, but I do believe there is not an unpaid bill in the house!” A moment’s reflection caused her to modify this statement. “At least, I cannot answer for Ombersley, but all those dreadful household accounts, which Eckington—you remember our good Eckington, Ombersley’s agent—used to pull such a face over; and the fees at Eton and Oxford—everything, my dear brother, Charles takes care of!”
    “You aren’t going to tell me Charles is fool enough to fritter away old Matt Rivenhall’s fortune paying all the expenses of this barrack of a house!” exclaimed Sir Horace.
    “No. Oh, no! I have not the least head for business, so it is of no use to ask me to explain it to you, but I believe that Charles persuaded his father to—to allow him to administer the estate.”
    “Blackmailed him