“You know, Lizzie, it’s a queer thing that any son of yours and Ombersley should have grown into such a dull stick,” remarked Sir Horace dispassionately. “I suppose you didn’t play Ombersley false, did you?”
“Horace!”
“No, I know you didn’t! No need to fly into a pucker! Not with your eldest; you know better than that! Still, it is an odd circumstance — often thought so! He can marry his bluestocking, and welcome, for anything I care, but none of this explains why you should be caring a fig for what he likes or don’t like!”
Lady Ombersley transferred her gaze from the glowing coals to his face. “You do not perfectly understand, Horace.”
“That’s what I said!” he retorted.
“Yes, but — Horace, Matthew Rivenhall left his whole fortune to Charles!”
Sir Horace was generally accounted an astute man, but he appeared to find it difficult correctly to assimilate this information. He stared fixedly at his sister for a moment or two, and then said, “You don’t mean that old uncle of Ombersley?”
“Yes, I do.”
“The nabob?”
Lady Ombersley nodded, but her brother was still not satisfied. “Fellow who made a fortune in India?”
“Yes, and we always thought — but he said Charles was the only Rivenhall other than himself who had the least grain of sense, and he left him everything, Horace! Everything!”
“Good God!”
This ejaculation seemed to appear to Lady Ombersley as fitting, for she nodded again, looking at her brother in a woe-begone fashion, and twisting the fringe of her shawl between her fingers.