Magdalen Cleverdon had come out for that day from Tavistock to visit her brother at Hall. She did not appear there very often, but made a point of duty to visit Hall once a quarter. Old Anthony had not interfered when his wife resisted the interference of her sister-in-law, and discouraged her visits to the house, and after his wife's death he had not invited her to be more frequent in her expeditions thither; nor had he shown her the slightest inclination to defer to her opinions, and attend to her advice.

Magdalen's visits can hardly have conduced to her own pleasure, so ungracious was her reception when she appeared, except only from Bessie, who was too tender-hearted to be unkind, unconciliatory to any one. Anthony, senior, regarded and spoke of his sister as an old and stupid harridan, and the younger Anthony took his tone from his father, and did not accord to his aunt the respect that was due to relationship and age.

Although one of her periodical visits to Hall usually brought on Magdalen a rebuff, yet she did not desist from them, partly because it satisfied her curiosity to see how matters fared in the old house, and partly, if not chiefly, because she gave herself in Tavistock considerable airs as the sister of the Squire of Hall, and she liked to appear to her neighbours as if on the best of terms with her kindred there.

Magdalen had never been pretty. Hers was one of those nondescript faces which Nature turns out when inventive faculty is exhausted, and she produces a being, much as a worn-out novelist writes a tale, because she is expected to be productive, though she has nothing but hackneyed features to produce. Or her face may be said to have resembled a modern hymn-tune that is made up of strains out of a score of older melodies muddled together, and void of individual character. Magdalen had, however, not a suspicion that her personal appearance was unattractive. If she had not been sought in marriage, that was due wholly to the inadequate manner in which she had been provided for by her father's will; he had, she held, sacrificed her to his ambition to make a rich man of Anthony.

She was a short, shapeless woman, with a muddy complexion and sandy hair, now turning grey, and therefore looking as if it were full of dust. Her eyes were faded, so were the lashes. She had bad teeth, and when she spoke she showed them a great deal more than was necessary. Any one conversing with her for the first time found nothing in her to notice except these teeth, and carried away from the interview no other recollection of her than one of—teeth.

She made a point of being well-dressed when she made her periodical visits to Hall, to show her consequence, and to let her brother see that she held herself in condition equal to his pretensions.

When she learned that her nephew and niece were not at Hall, but had gone to the moor for the day to watch the fires, and to endeavour to recover some colts that had been turned out on it by old Cleverdon, she expressed her satisfaction to her brother.

"It is as well, Tony," she said, "for I want to have a talk with you; I am thinking——"

"What? Talk first and think after? That is the usual way," said Cleverdon, rudely.

Magdalen tossed her chin. She did not think it prudent to notice and resent her brother's discourtesy. She was not likely to gain much by flattering or humouring him; but to quarrel with him was against her wishes.

"Really, Tony, I have your interests so much at heart——"

"I never asked you to cupboard them there; but, if they be there, turn the key on them, and let them abide where they are."

"You are clever and witty—that every one knows—and you like to snap your lock under my eyes and make me wince as the sparks fly out; but I know very well there is no powder in the barrel, and I do not mind. You really must attend to me, brother. There has been so much small-pox about, and it has been so fatal, that upon my word, as a woman, you should lend me your ear."

"What has the small-pox to do with my interests?"

"Much. Have you made your will, or a settlement of the property?"

"What now!" exclaimed Anthony Cleverdon roughly. "You came to scare me with thoughts of small-pox, and want me to draw my will, and provide for you?"

"About that latter point I say nothing, though I do feel that I was ill-treated by my father. You had the kernal and I had the rind of the nut."

"I dispute that altogether. You are an incumbrance on the estate that I feel heavily."

"I am likely to encumber it somewhat longer," said Magdalen, not showing resentment at his brutality. "I do not fear the small-pox. I have had it, and it has marked me; though not so as to disfigure. The Lord forbid!"

Observing that her brother was about to make a remark, and being confident that it would be something offensive, she hastily went on: "But what, Tony—what if it were to attack your Anthony? What if it were to take him off? You have but a single son. To whom would Hall go then?"

Old Squire Cleverdon started to his feet, and strode, muttering, about the room.

"Ah! It is a thought to consider. The Knightons have lost their heir, and he was a fine and lusty youth. Our Anthony is so thoughtless; he runs where he lists, and does not consider that he may be near infection. Please the Lord nothing may happen; but suppose that he were carried off, who would have Hall? Bessie?"

"Bessie! Are you mad?" Old Cleverdon put his hands in his breeches-pocket and turned and scowled at his sister.

"No. I reckon Bessie would be put off with scant treatment, like myself. Then, Luke?"

"Luke!" Cleverdon burst out laughing. "Never a parson here in Hall, if I can help it. A shaveling like he——"

"Then, who would have it?"

"Not you, if you are aiming thereat," said Cleverdon.

"I was not aiming at that. Such a prospect never rose before me. I do not want Hall. I could not manage the estate."

"I shall take care you have not the chance."

"I have no doubt you will. But consider what are the accidents of life. If you were to lose Anthony——"

"But I shall not. Anthony is flourishing, and not a thought of small-pox, or the falling sickness, or the plague about him. He is sound as a bell; so have done with your croak, you raven. I will call up the servants and have in dinner. You can eat, I suppose?"

"Yes, I can eat, and digest your unkindness; but I cannot forget my anxiety. I am considering the welfare of the family. I am looking beyond myself and yourself. You have raised the Cleverdons from being tenant-farmers into being gentlefolks. You have been to the Heralds to grant you a coat of arms and a crest, and, now every one calls you the Squire, who used to call your father a farmer. You have altered Hall into a very handsome mansion, that no gentleman of good degree need be ashamed to live in. I consider all that, brother, and then I think that you are no fool, that you have wonderful wits to have achieved so much, and I am only anxious lest after having achieved so much for the family and the name of Cleverdon, all should go down again, as it did with the Glanvilles—just because there was no heir male."

"Have done with your croak—here comes dinner."

During the meal old Anthony was very silent. He pulled long and often at the tankard, and neglected the courtesies due to his sister as a guest. She observed that he was uneasy, and was wrapped in thought. What she had said had stuck, and made him uncomfortable. She was too shrewd to revert to the topic during dinner, and when it was over he went out, and left her alone. She knew her brother's ways, his moods, and the turns of his mind, and was convinced that he would come back to her presently and broach anew the subject.

She leaned back in the arm-chair, and indulged herself in a nap. The doze lasted about three-quarters of an hour. Whilst she slept her brother was walking about the farm, in great restlessness of mind and body. He was quick-witted enough to see that Magdalen was right. He could not count on matters not falling out as she had said, and then all his labour to build up the Cleverdons would come down like a pack of cards. His son was the main prop of the great superstructure raised by his pride and ambition. If his son, by the dispensation of Providence, were to fail him, he had none to sustain the succession save his daughter Bessie and his cousin Luke, a delicate, narrow-chested lad, who had been an encumbrance thrown on him, had been reared by him, and sent to school by him, and then thrust into sacred Orders as the simplest way of providing for him, and getting him out of the way. Hall to pass to Bessie or to Luke! The idea was most distasteful to him.

He returned to the oak parlour, where he had left his sister, and shook her until she roused from her nap.

"Sit up—gather your senses! You do not come here to sleep like a frog," said old Anthony with his wonted rudeness.

"I beg pardon, brother. I was left alone and had nought to occupy my mind, and dozed for a minute."

"I say to you, Mawdline!"—Squire Cleverdon paced the room with his hands knotted behind his back, writhing with the inward agitation of his nerves—"I tell you Mawdline, that you did not come here to scare me about small-pox without some design lurking behind. Let me hear it. You have emptied the pepper-box, now for the salt-box."

"I do not know anything of a design behind," answered Magdalen, rallying her scattered senses, and then plunging into the main communication with less caution than if she had been fully awake; "but I think, brother, you should get them both married as quickly as you may."

"Both!—what Anthony and Bess?"

"To be sure. Anthony might take Julian at any time; and for Bessie——"

Cleverdon laughed. "I never heard that Bessie had a gallant as yet, and she never had good looks to lure one. If Tony takes a wife that is sufficient."

"No, brother, it is hardly sufficient. He might, if he married, chance to have no children. Besides, it is well to have alliances on all sides. If only I had married——"

"Fernando Crymes," muttered her brother. "You tried hard for him before he took his first wife."

Magdalen tossed and shook her head. "You indeed misunderstand me. You try to provoke me, brother; but I will not be provoked. I am too desirous to advance the family to be browbeat by you and forced to hold silence. Elizabeth is getting forward in years, and she might be the means of alliance to a good family that would help to give ours firmer hold in the position it has won. There is Anthony Crymes, for instance."

"What!—Fox for Bessie? This is sheer folly."

"Yes, Fox. What against him?"

"Nay, naught other against him, save that he does not lay his fancy to Bessie."

"I am not certain of that. Why else has he rid this day to the moor? He has not gone for love of his sister, that all the world knows. Now see this, brother Tony. If you was to marry Anthony to Julian, and Bessie to Fox, then you would be close allied to one of the best families of the country-side, and he who would lift a word against you would rouse all the Crymes that remain. They were not unwilling to draw to us, or else why did Squire Crymes bid you to be his son's godfather? Fox will not be rich, but he will have something from his father, and that will be enough with what you let Bessie have to make them do well. Then, if there come a family of children on either side, it is well, for there will be a large kindred in the district, and if there be none on one side, but only on the other then what property there is, this way or that, does not fall out of the family."

"If Bessie is to be married, we might look elsewhere for one richer."

"Where will you look? Who among the neighbours is old enough or young enough? Some are over her age. You would not give her to Master Solomon Gibbs. Some be too young and hot-blooded to care for her, not very well favoured, and without much wealth."

Old Anthony stood still before the window and looked out.

"Then," said Magdalen, "there's another side of the matter to be considered. What if Bessie should set her heart on some one of whom you would not approve?"

Old Anthony laughed mockingly. "Not much chance of that I reckon."

"Do you reckon?" asked his sister, with some heat. "Yes, you men make up your minds that we spinsters have no hearts, go through no trials, because you do not see them. As our love is not proclaimed on the house-tops you assume that it does not exist in the secret chambers of the heart. If you are forced to admit that there is such a thing in us, you suppose it may be killed with ridicule, as you put salt on weeds. As for your own headlong, turbulent passions, they brook no control, they are irresistible, but we poor women must smother our fires as if always illicit, like a chimney in a blaze that must be choked out with damp straw stuffed in. You men never consider us. You permit a pretty girl to love, and you consider her feelings somewhat—just somewhat; but it never occurs to your wise heads, but shallow thoughts, that the plain faces and the ordinary-favoured girls may have hearts as tender and susceptible as those who are regarded as beauties. Now, as to Bessie——"

"Well, what as to Bessie?" asked Anthony roughly. He knew that his sister was lightly lifting the corner of a veil that covered her past, and he knew how that by a little generosity on his part, he might have made it possible for her to marry.

"As to Bessie?" resumed Magdalen. "I can only speak what I suspect. I have thought for some time she was fond of her cousin."

"What—of Luke?"

"Of Luke, certainly."

Old Anthony turned angrily on her, and said, "A pack of folly! He is her cousin."

"I said so. Does that prevent her liking him? Have you aught against that?"

"Everything. I will not hear of her marrying a pigeon-breasted, starveling curate. I will speak to her."

"If you meddle you will mar. Take a woman's advice, and say not a word."

"Then be silent, on this matter."

"If you marry Tony," said his sister, "what are you going to do with Elizabeth? Fernando Crymes has Kilworthy for his life, so that the young people will, I doubt not, live here; and Julian will no more let Bessie remain than would your Margaret suffer me."

"She shall abide here as I choose it."

"No, indeed. You may will it; but women's wishes, when they go contrary, can make a bad storm in the house, and spoil it as a port of peace. You take my counsel and mate the twain together—the one to Julian and the other to Fox."

"Pshaw!" said the old man turning away from the window. "Because I was godfather to Fox, it does not follow that he wants to be my son."

Then the old man came over to the table that stood near his sister, seated himself, and began to trifle with a snuff-box upon it.

"I shall not part with Bess," he said, "till Tony is matched."

"Then let him be matched with speed," said Magdalen sharply. "How know you but that, if you delay, Julian Crymes may turn her fancy elsewhere. She is a wayward hussy."

"Pshaw! Where is there such a lad as my Tony? He is the chiefest of all the youths about. Not one can compare with him. Are you mad to think of such a thing?"

"There is no reckoning on a maid's eyes; they do not see like ours. Moreover, there is no saying what freak might take your Tony, and he might set his mind on some one else."

"No fear of that," answered the squire roughly. "He knows my will, and that is law to him."

"Indeed! Since when? I thought that the cockerel's whimsies and vagaries set the law to the house; and that you, and Bess, and every one of the family danced to such tune as he whistled."

"I reckon he knows his own interests," said the old man grimly. He was angered by his sister's opposition.

"None can trust to that in young men," answered his sister, "as you ought best to know, brother."

Old Anthony winced, and became purple at this allusion to his own marriage. He started up, struck the snuff-box across the table, then seated himself again, and said grimly: "I asked you, sister, if you could eat and digest a good, wholesome dinner, and I gave it you; but, by Heaven, you have come here and fed me with unwholesome and unsavoury diet that I cannot digest, and that gives me a worry and heartburn. I wish you had never come."