The Unknown Ajax Read Free

him in the slightest affection! Never, never could I bring myself to disown my son! Not though he married a dozen weaver’s daughters!”
    “Oh, I think we should be obliged to disown him if he married a dozen of them, Mama!” Anthea said, laughing. “It would be quite excessive, and so embarrassing! Oh, no, don’t frown at me! It don’t become you, and I won’t fun any more, I promise you! Is that what my uncle did? Married a weaver’s daughter?”
    “Well, that’s what I was told,” replied Mrs. Darracott cautiously. “It all happened before I was married to your papa, so I am not perfectly sure. Papa wouldn’t have spoken of it, only that there was a notice of Hugh’s death published in the Gazette, and he was afraid I might see it, and make some remark.”
    “When did he die, Mama?”
    “Now that I can tell you, for it was the very year I was married, and had just come back from my honeymoon to live here. It was in 1793. He was killed, poor man. I can’t remember the name of the place, but I do know it was in Holland. I daresay we were engaged in a war there, for he was a military man. And I shouldn’t be at all astonished, Anthea, if that is what makes your grandfather so determined Richmond shan’t enter the army. I don’t mean Hugh’s being killed, but if he had not been a military man he would never have been stationed in Yorkshire, and, of course, if he had not been stationed there he would never have met that female, let alone have become so disastrously entangled. I believe she was a very low, vulgar creature, and lived in Huddersfield. I must own that it is not at all what one would wish for one’s son.”
    “No, indeed!” Anthea agreed. “What in the world can have possessed him to do such a thing? And he a Darracott!”
    “Exactly so, my love! The most imprudent thing, for he cannot have supposed that your grandfather would forgive such a shocking misalliance! When one thinks how he holds up his nose at quite respectable persons, and never visits the Metropolis because he says it has grown to be full of mushrooms, and once-a-week beaux—! I must say, I never knew anyone who set himself on such a high form. And then to have his son marrying a weaver’s daughter! Well!”
    “And to be obliged in the end to receive her son as his heir!” said Anthea. “No wonder he has been like a bear at a stake all these months! Did he know, when my uncle and Oliver were drowned, how it was? Was that what made him so out of reason cross? Why has he waited so long before breaking it to us? Why—Oh, how provoking it is to think he won’t tell us, and we dare not ask him!”
    “Perhaps he will tell Richmond,” suggested Mrs. Darracott hopefully. “No,” Anthea said, with a decided shake of her head. “Richmond won’t ask him. Richmond never asks him questions he doesn’t wish to answer, any more than he argues with him, or runs counter to him.”
    “Dear Richmond!” sighed Mrs. Darracott fondly. “I am sure he must be the best-natured boy in the world!”
    “Certainly the best-natured grandson,” said Anthea, a trifle dryly.
    “Indeed he is!” agreed her mother. “Sometimes I quite marvel at him, you know, for young men are not in general so tractable and good-humoured. And it is not that he lacks spirit!” “No,” said Anthea. “He doesn’t lack spirit.”
    “The thing is,” pursued Mrs. Darracott, “that he has the sweetest disposition imaginable! Only think how good he is to your grandfather, sitting with him every evening, and playing chess, which must be the dullest thing in the world! I wonder, too, how many boys who had set their hearts on a pair of colours would have behaved as beautifully as he did, when your grandfather forbade him to think of such a thing? I don’t scruple to own to you, my love, that I was in a quake for days, dreading, you know, that he might do something foolish and hot-headed. After all, he is a Darracott, and even your uncle Matthew was