’Honor!’ exclaimed Oliver Luxmore, working his feet uneasily under the table, ’there you are wrong. The Luxmores have had it for many generations. You have only to look in the registers to see that.’
’Yes, father, some Luxmores have been there, but not our Luxmores as far as we know. I wish you would not trouble your head about Coombe Park. We shall never get it. I doubt if we have a thread of a right to it. If we have, I never saw it.’
’We shall see, we shall see,’ said the carrier. ’Girls haven’t got lawyers’ minds, and don’t follow evidence.’
’I have undertaken to go with your father to Lawyer Physick at Okehampton,’ said Taverner Langford, ’and to help him to have his right examined.’
’Nothing can come of it but heart-breakings,’ sighed Honor; ’father will slip certainties to seize shadows.’
’I have nothing to lose,’ said Oliver, ’and much to gain.’
Honor knew it was in vain to attempt to disabuse him of his cherished delusion. She so far shared his views as to believe that the family had gentle blood in their veins, and were descended somehow, in some vague, undefined manner, from the Luxmores of Coombe Park, through, perhaps, some younger son of a junior branch, and she liked to suppose that the beauty and superiority of manner in her brothers and sisters were due to this, but she did not share in her father’s expectations of recovering the property. Her understanding was too clear to harbour this.
’I will go back to what I asked of Mr. Langford,’ she said, after a pause. ’Will you take my brother Charles into your service, sir? He wants a firm hand over him. He is not bad at heart, but he is infirm of purpose, easily led astray. If he were here with you, he would be far from the "Ring of Bells," and his work would sever him from idle companions.’
’So, you don’t want him to be at Chimsworthy?’
’I do not desire to be under obligation there.’
’You have no objection to placing yourself under obligation to me?’
Honor did not like the tone. She did not understand his returning to the same point; she turned uneasily to her father, and asked him to put in a word for poor Charles.
’Mr. Langford is more likely to grant a boon to you than to me,’ answered Oliver evasively.
’Sit down, Honor,’ he said. ’You have remained standing the whole time you have been here.’