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"This, sir, will be a war to the death. One side or the other will fight until their blood is all let, and until their homes are all ruins." He darted at Stephen one look from under those fierce eyebrows. "Do you intend to go sir?" Stephen met the look squarely. "No, sir," he answered, steadily, "not now." "Humph," said the Judge.
'Go into the garden and tap at the dining-room window, and tell your master that I must speak to him at once in the drawing-room. And in a pitiable state of excitation, she returned to the drawing-room. After another interminable period of suspense, her ear caught the sound of the opening of doors, and then Stephen came into the drawing-room. A singular apparition!
And mark what I say it was he whom you had in mind on that birthday when you implored me to make something of myself, It was Stephen Brice." Her eyes flashed upon him quickly. "Oh, how dare you?" she cried. "I dare anything, Virginia," he answered quietly. "I am not blaming you. And I am sure that you did not realize that he was the ideal which you had in mind."
Then came the Rejoinder, then the Surrejoinder, then the Rebutter, then the Surrebutter. But they rarely got that far," he added unwisely. "A good principle in Law, sir," said the Judge, "is not to volunteer information." Stephen was somewhat cast down when he reached home that Saturday evening. He had come out of his examination with feathers drooping.
His conversation was chiefly addressed to the widow. Rarely to Stephen; whose wholesome respect for his employer had in no wise abated. Through the stifling heat of these summer days Stephen sat in the outer office, straining at the law. Had it not been for the fact that Mr. Whipple went to his mother's house, despair would have seized him long since.
But everything was awry: Boston was a failure; Claude was a weakling and a flirt; her turquoise ring was lying on the river-bank; Stephen did not love her any longer; her flower-beds were plowed up and planted in corn; and the cottage that Stephen had built and she had furnished, that beloved cottage, was to let. She was in Boston; but what did that amount to, after all?
And that was the widow of Sir Lionel Verner. When she arrived from India with her other two children, a son and daughter, she found old Mr. Verner dead, and Stephen the inheritor. Deeply annoyed and disappointed, Lady Verner deemed that a crying wrong had been perpetrated upon her and hers. But she had no power to undo it.
"And now," said Stephen, "why do they not keep their hold?" Richter sighed. "We were unused to ruling," he answered. "We knew not how to act what to do. You must remember that we were not trained to govern ourselves, as are you of the English race, from children. Those who have been for centuries ground under heel do not make practical parliamentarians.
Stephen was able to turn the laugh against his chief adversary and rival, George Bates of the Eagle, who proposed seeking for the lapwing's nest in hopes of a dainty dish of plovers' eggs; being too great a cockney to remember that in September the contents of the eggs were probably flying over the heather, as well able to shift for themselves as their parents.
Stephen made successive statements of assent. He sat grasping his hat between his knees, his eyes fixed upon an infant's sock which lay upon the floor immediately in front of him, looking at Mrs. Sand as seldom and as briefly as possible, as if his glance took rather an unfair advantage, which he would spare her. "Yes, yes," he said. "Yes, certainly," revolving his hat in his hands.
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