The poor fellow was hardly in his grave before the storm burst on Alfred’s head.  If Mr. Thorne had barely tolerated the idea of his son’s marriage before, he found it utterly intolerable now; and the decree went forth that this boyish folly about Miss Percival must be forgotten.  “I can do as I like with Brackenhill,” said Mr. Thorne:  “remember that.”  Alfred did remember it.  He had heard it often enough, and his father’s angry eyes gave it an added emphasis.  “I can make an eldest son of James if I like, and I will if you defy me.”  But nothing could shake Alfred.  He had given his word to Miss Percival, and they loved each other, and he meant to keep to it.  “You don’t believe me,” his father thundered:  “you think I may talk, but that I sha’n’t do it.  Take care!” There was no trace of any conflict on Alfred’s face:  he looked a little dull and heavy under the bitter storm, but that was all.  “I can’t help it, sir,” he said, tracing the pattern of the carpet with the toe of his boot as he stood:  “you will do as you please, I suppose.”—­“I suppose I shall,” said Mr. Thorne.

So Alfred was disinherited.  “As well for this as anything else,” he said:  “we couldn’t have got on long.”  He had an allowance from his father, who declined to take any further interest in his plans.  He went abroad for a couple of years—­a test which Mr. Percival imposed upon him that nothing might be done in haste—­and came back, faithful as he went, to ask for the consent which could no longer be denied.  Mr. Percival had been presented to a living at some distance from Brackenhill, and, as there was a good deal of glebe-land attached to it, Alfred was able to try his hand at farming.  He did so, with a little loss if no gain, and they made one household at the rectory.

He never seemed to regret Brackenhill.  Sarah—­dark, ardent, intense, a strange contrast to his own fair, handsome face and placid indolence—­absorbed all his love.  Her eager nature could not rouse him to battle with the world, but it woke a passionate devotion in his heart:  they were everything to each other, and were content.  When their boy was born the rector would have named him Godfrey:  at any rate, he urged them to call him by one of the old family names which had been borne by bygone generations of Thornes.  But the young husband was resolved that the child should be Percival, and Percival only.  “Why prejudice his grandfather against him for a mere name?” the rector persisted.  But Alfred shook his head.  “Percival means all the happiness of my life,” he said.  So the child received his name, and the fact was announced to Mr. Thorne in a letter brief and to the point like a challenge.