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Have you made no inquiries?" "Yes. I have been to Melcombe. I could discover nothing at all. No," in answer to another look, "neither then, or at any other time." "But you are older than I am, so much older, had you never any suspicion of anything at all? Did nothing ever occur before I was old enough to notice things which roused in you any suspicions?" "Suspicions of what?"
And the other thousand?" "Louisa has married a rich man's son, and I have made a handsome settlement on Emily, but your sister Lizzie has nothing." "I will leave her the other thousand; and and now, John, there is the estate there is Melcombe. I thought you had a right to know that there had been a disadvantage as regarded my inheritance of it, but you are perfectly " He hesitated for a word.
John was too much vexed to answer, and Peter's chance from that moment of ever entering those doors again was not worth a rush. "But you needn't mind, father dear," said Janie, the eldest child present, "Peter's ghost won't come here. It doesn't belong to 'grand, or to any of us. Its name was Melcombe, and it came from the sea, that they might know it was dead."
"I declare, he scarcely spoke to me all breakfast-time," thought Laura. "I consider him decidedly a proud man, and any one might think he had come to see Peter rather than to see us." Brandon evidently did wish to walk with the boy, and accordingly rose as soon as he had finished his breakfast, Mrs. Melcombe giving him some directions, and a key to let himself in with by a side gate.
"At Corfu, on the 28th of February, to the inexpressible grief of his mother, Peter, only child of the late Peter Melcombe, Esq., and great-grandson and heir of the late Mrs. Melcombe, of Melcombe. In the twelfth year of his age." "Good heavens!" exclaimed Valentine, in an awestruck whisper. "Then it has come to this, after all?"
Melcombe and Laura were not of the nagging order of women, they never said sarcastic or ill-natured things to one another, the foibles of the one suited the other; and if they had a few uncomfortable words now and then between themselves, they had enough esprit de corps to hide this from all outsiders.
Melcombe was six or seven miles from any visitable families, excepting two or three clergymen and their wives; it was shut up in a three-cornered nook of land, and could not be approached excepting through turn-pikes, and up and down some specially steep hills. These things make havoc with country sociability.
Brandon, with pen and ink, began trying to make a sketch of the portrait, and very soon found himself alone with Laura, as he had fully expected would be the case. Whereupon, sitting with his back to her, and working away at his etching, he presently said "I mentioned yesterday to Mrs. Melcombe that I had come on business." "Yes," Laura answered.
Has he written from Melcombe to you, John?" "No," John answered, and added, after another short silence, "I feel the loss of his company; it leaves me the more alone." Then, to her surprise, he began at once to speak of this much-loved old man, and related two or three little evidences of his kindness and charity that she liked to hear, and that it evidently was a relief to him to tell.
If you please to accept of it, and are willing that our friendship should be known when we are gone, you will be pleased to leave this among those of your own papers that may possibly see the light by a posthumous publication. God send us health while we stay, and an easy journey! My dear Dr. Young, "Yours, most cordially, "MELCOMBE."
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