The man servant and Georgiana’s attendant being dismissed for a like purpose, Foxwell and Rashleigh, to give the ladies that brief privacy from masculine eyes which a toilet-marring journey makes welcome, went down-stairs and paced the yard till dinner was ready.
“So this is the place of your retreat, Bob,” said Rashleigh; “or hereabouts, I mean.”
“An old house and some beggarly acres eight miles from here. ’Tis my last ditch. Perhaps I was lucky in having that to fall back into. Fortune was set upon driving me from the field in London.”
“But you might still have contrived to live there one way or another. Men do, who have lost their all.”
“By playing the parasite?—begging of people whom I scorn?—laughing at great men’s stupid jests, or enslaving myself to great ladies’ caprices? Not I. Neither could I play the common rook where I had once lived the gentleman. Nor had I any fancy for the debtors’ prison. I might have turned highwayman, but I am too old and indolent, and the risk is too great. No; for a gentleman who had made the figure I had, and who could no more keep up that figure,—curse the cards and the tables, the mercenary women and the swindling tradesmen!—there was nothing but self-banishment to the ancestral fields.”
“’Tis a wonder you’ve kept _them_. I should have thought, from your habits of old, you’d have converted the last inch into the ready by this time.”
“They are beyond my power to convert. The estate is mine only in part. I share the possession with that young person you saw up-stairs.”
Foxwell shrugged his shoulders. “She may be pretty—I really haven’t concerned myself enough to study her looks. I shall doubtless find her an intolerable drag upon me. Notwithstanding our relationship, we are new acquaintances. She is my brother’s orphan—the only child. She was born at Foxwell Court, the place of my retirement, and she spent her childhood there. Both her parents died when she was very young; my father survived them a year, and upon his death she was sent to be reared by her mother’s elder sister. During all this time,—from before my brother’s marriage till after this girl left Foxwell Court,—I never came near the place. Most of the time, indeed, I was abroad, but even when in England I preferred the South,—and my father perhaps was not sorry for that, for, to tell the truth, I had never agreed with him and my brother, and, as the old gentleman loved his peace, he could spare my presence. After his death and the departure of the girl, Foxwell Court was shut up for a long while,—that is to say, till I sought refuge there two years ago. My father left the place to me and my niece, on such terms that it cannot be divided till she marries, nor my share sold during my lifetime.”