“Harry never cared for any mortal but himself.  How disgracefully he behaved about our marriage; for this same woman’s sake, I have no doubt.  You must remember that I disapproved of Harry from the very first.  The idea of terminating a liaison of that kind with a marriage!  Harry ought to be put out of decent society.  You and I ought to be at Seat-Sandal now.  Charlotte will be pushing that Stephen Latrigg into the Sandal affairs, and you know what I think of Stephen Latrigg.  He is to be feared, too, for he has capabilities, and Charlotte to back him; and Charlotte was always underhand, Sophia.  You would not see it, but she was.  Order your trunks to be packed at once,—­don’t forget the rubies my mother promised you,—­and I will have a conversation with the judge.”

Judge Thomas Sandal was by no means a bad fellow.  He had left Sandal-Side under a sense of great injustice, but he had done well to himself; and those who had done him wrong, had disappeared into the cloud of death.  He had forgotten all his grievances, he had even forgotten the inflicters of them.  He had now a kindly feeling towards Sandal, and was a little proud of having sprung from such a grand old race.  Therefore, when Julius told him what had happened, and frankly said he thought he could buy from Harry Sandal all his rights of succession to the estate, Judge Thomas Sandal saw nothing unjust in the affair.

The law of primogeniture had always appeared to him a most unjust and foolish law.  In his own youth it had been a source of burning anger and dispute.  He had always declared it was a shame to give Launcelot every thing, and William and himself scarce a crumb off the family loaf.  To his eldest brother, as his eldest brother, he had declined to give “honor and obedience.”  “William is a far finer fellow,” he said one day to his mother; “far more worthy to follow father than Launcie is.  If there is any particular merit in keeping up the old seat and name, for goodness’ sake let father choose the best of us to do it!” For such revolutionary and disrespectful sentiments he had been frequently in disgrace; and the end of the disputing had been his own expatriation, and the founding of a family of East-Indian Sandals.

He heard Julius with approval.  “I think you have a very good plan,” he said.  “Harry Sandal, with his play-singing wife, would have a very bad time of it among the Dalesmen.  He knows it.  He will have no desire to test the feeling.  I am sure he will be glad to have a sum of ready money in lieu of such an uncomfortable right.  As for the Latriggs, my mother always detested them.  Sophia and you are both Sandals; certainly, your claim would be before that of a Charlotte Latrigg.”

“Harry, too, is one of those men who are always poor, always wanting money.  I dare say I can buy his succession for a song.”