Mr. John Short was often to and fro between Abbotsmead and Norminster during that summer, and an idea prevailed in the household that the squire was altering his will again.  His son Frederick had died intestate, and the squire had taken possession of what he left.  The poor lady in seclusion at Caen died also about this time, and a large addition was made to Mr. Fairfax’s income—­so large that his loss by the Durham lawsuit was more than balanced.  The lawyer looked far from pleasant while transacting his client’s business.  It was true that Mr. Frederick Fairfax had left no will, but he had expressed certain distinct intentions, and these intentions, to the indignant astonishment of many persons, his father would not carry out.  Mr. Forbes talked to him of the sacredness of his son’s wishes, but the squire had a purpose for the money, and was obstinate in his refusal to relinquish it.  Some people decided that thus he meant to enrich his granddaughter without impoverishing Abbotsmead for his successor, but Mr. John Short’s manner to the young lady was tinctured with a respectful compassion that did not augur well for her prospects.

Bessie paid very little heed to the speculations of which she could not fail to hear something.  So long as her grandfather was tolerably kind to her she asked no more from the present, and she left the future to take care of itself.  But it cannot be averred that he was invariably kind.  There seemed to lurk in his mind a sense of injury, which he visited upon her in sarcastic gibes and allusions to the Forest, taunting her with impatience to have done with him and begone to her dearer friends.  Bessie resented this for a little while, but by and by she ceased to be affected, and treated it as the pettishness of a sick old man, never used to be considerate for others.  He kept her very much confined and gave her scant thanks for her care of him.  If Mr. Cecil Burleigh admired patience and forbearance in a woman, he had the opportunity of studying a fair example of both in her.  He pitied her secretly, but she put on no martyr-airs.  “It is nothing.  Oh no, grandpapa is not difficult—­it is only his way.  Most people are testy when they are ill,” she would plead, and she believed what she said.  The early sense of repulsion and disappointment once overcome, she was too sensible to bewail the want of unselfish affection where it had never existed before.

The squire had certain habits of long standing—­habits of coldness, distance, reserve, and he never changed materially.  He survived through the ensuing autumn and winter, and finally sank during the north-easterly weather of the following spring, just two years after the death of his son Frederick.  Jonquil and Macky, who had been all his life about him, were his most acceptable attendants.  He did not care to have his son Laurence with him, and when the children came over it was not by his invitation.  Mr. Forbes visited him almost daily, and Mr. Cecil Burleigh came