“A girl!” cried Richard Bassett with contemptuous amazement. Even his melancholy forebodings had not gone that length. “And what have they got at Huntercombe?”
The ringers heard, and sent one of their number to ask him if they should ring.
“What for?” asked Bassett with a nasty glittering eye; and then with sudden fury he seized a large piece of wood from the basket to fling at his insulter. “I'll teach you to come and mock me.”
Bassett chucked the wood back into the basket, and sat down gloomily, saying, “Then how dare he come and talk about ringing bells for a girl? To think that I should have all this fright, and my wife all this trouble--for a girl!”
It was no time to talk of business then; but about a fortnight afterward Wheeler said, “I took the detective off, to save you expense.”
“I gave you the woman's address; so the matter is in your hands now, I consider.”
“Yes,” said Bassett, wearily; “Move no further in it.”
“Certainly not; and, frankly, I should be glad to see you abandon it.”
“I _have_ abandoned it. Why should I stir the mud now? I and mine are thrown out forever; the only question is, shall a son of Sir Charles or the parson's son inherit? I'm for the wrongful heir. Ay,” he cried, starting up, and beating the air with his fists in sudden fury, “since the right Bassetts are never to have it, let the wrong Bassetts be thrown out, at all events; I'm on my back, but Sir Charles is no better off; a bastard will succeed him, thanks to that cursed woman who defeated _me.”_
This turn took Wheeler by surprise. It also gave him real pain. “Bassett,” said he, “I pity you. What sort of a life has yours been for the last eight years? Yet, when there's no fuel left for war and hatred, you blow the embers. You are incurable.”
“I am,” said Richard. “I'll hate those two with my last breath and curse them in my last prayer.”
LADY BASSETT'S forebodings, like most of our insights into the future, were confuted by the event.
She became the happy mother of a flaxen-haired boy. She insisted on nursing him herself; and the experienced persons who attended her raised no objection.
In connection with this she gave Sir Charles a peck, not very severe, but sudden, and remarkable as the only one on record.
