At last--and this was something so wonderful that even the servants who waited at table were appalled--Miss Augustine recommenced the conversation. “You have had some one here to-day,” she said. “Farrel-Austin--I met him.”
“Yes!” said Miss Susan, breathless and alarmed.
“It seemed to me that the shadow had fallen upon them already. He is gray and changed. I have not seen him for a long time; his wife is ill, and his children are delicate.”
“Nonsense, Austine, the girls are as strong and well as a couple of young hoydens need be.” Miss Susan spoke almost sharply, and in a half-frightened tone.
“You think so, Susan; for my part I saw the shadow plainly. It is that their time is drawing near to inherit. Perhaps as they are girls, nothing will happen to them; nothing ever happened to us; that is to say, they will not marry probably; they will be as we have been. I wish to know them, Susan. Probably one of them would take up my work, and endeavor to keep further trouble from the house.”
“Farrel’s daughter? you are very good, Austine, very good; you put me to shame,” said Miss Susan, bending her head.
“Yes; why not Farrel’s daughter? She is a woman like the rest of us and an Austin, like the rest of us. I wish the property could pass to women, then there might be an end of it once for all.”
“In that case it would go to Reine, and there would not in the least be the end of it; quite the reverse.”
“I could persuade Reine,” said Miss Augustine. “Ah, yes; I could persuade _her_. She knows my life. She knows about the family, how we have all suffered. Reine would be led by me; she would give it up, as I should have done had I the power. But men will not do such a thing. I am not blaming them, I am saying what is the fact. Reine would have given it up.”
“You speak like a visionary,” said Miss Susan sighing. “Yes, I daresay Reine would be capable of a piece of folly, or you, or even myself. We do things that seem right to us at the moment without taking other things into consideration, when we are quite free to do what we like. But don’t you see, my dear, a man with an entailed estate is not free? His son or his heir must come after him, as his father went before him; he is only a kind of a tenant. Farrel, since you have spoken of Farrel--I would not have begun it--dare not alienate property from Everard; and Everard, when it comes to him, must keep it for his son, if he ever has one.”