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The ship did sail without Mr. Gregory Wychecombe, and was lost, every soul on board perishing. My grandfather passed into Virginia, where he remained a twelvemonth, suppressing his story, lest its narration might lead to military punishment. Love next sealed his future fate. He married a woman of fortune, and though his history was well known in his own retired circle, it never spread beyond it.
Let that be as it may; no bastard should lord it at Wychecombe; and rather than the king; should get the lands, to bestow on some favourite, I would give it to the half-blood." "Can that be done without making a will, brother Thomas?" "It cannot, Sir Wycherly; nor with a will, so long as an heir of entail can be found." "Is there no way of making Tom a filius somebody, so that he can succeed?"
The reader will understand, of course, that all these details were unknown to the inmates of the Hall, beyond the fact of the expected arrival of Sir Reginald Wychecombe, and that of the circumstance of the half-blood; which, in its true bearing, was known alone to Tom.
Have a little patience, and I will manage the whole thing, 'ship-shape, and Brister fashion, as we say at sea. Halloo there, Master Wychecombe answer my hail, and I will soon get you into deep water." "I'm safe on the ledge," returned the voice of Wychecombe, from below; "I wish you would look to the signal-halyards, and see they do not chafe against the rocks, Mr. Dutton."
Thomas Wychecombe is brought in with a fullness of description that justifies the reader in entertaining a rational expectation of finding in him a satisfactory scoundrel, capable, desperate, full of resources, needing the highest display of energy and ability to be overcome. This reasonable anticipation is disappointed.
"What, even to the Virginian, Wychecombe!" rejoined Sir Gervaise, greatly gratified with the natural commendation conveyed in the manner and words of the other, and looking in a smiling, friendly manner, at the young man. "I was afraid the hits you got in Devonshire might have induced you to separate your nationality from that of old England." "Even to the Virginian, Sir Gervaise.
"Therein you do them injustice, Sir Gervaise; as it is their duty to administer the laws, let them be what they may." "Perhaps you are right, sir. But the reason for my asking what a nullus is, was the circumstance that Sir Wycherly, in the course of his efforts to speak, repeatedly called his nephew and heir, Mr. Thomas Wychecombe, by that epithet." "Did he, indeed?
In point of fact, Sir Reginald Wychecombe knew no more of the Comte de Vervillin's intended movements than his companion; but he did not hesitate to assert what he now did, in order to obtain a great political advantage, in a moment of so much importance.
In short, Wychecombe was one of those places which was so far on the decline, that few or no traces of any little importance it may have once possessed, were any longer to be discovered; and it had sunk entirely into a hamlet that owed its allowed claims to be marked on the maps, and to be noted in the gazetteers, altogether to its antiquity, and the name it had given to one of the oldest knightly families in England.
"It is lost in the fog, sir; we are above it, here; when more on a level with the ships, we could see, or fancy we saw, more of them than we do now." "Here are the upper sails of two heavy ships, sir," observed Wychecombe, pointing in the direction of the vessels already seen; "ay, and yonder are two more nothing but the royals are visible." "Two more!
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