“Harold would do anything kind,” I said, “or to see an old friend of his father.  The worst of it is that there seem to be so few who wish to see him, or can even forgive me for staying with him.”

I showed her Lord Erymanth’s letter, and told her of the others, asking her what it meant.  “Oh, as to Lady Diana,” she said, “there is no doubt about that.  She was greatly offended at your having sent away her carriage and not having taken her advice, and she goes about saying she is disappointed in you.”

For my mother’s sake, and my little Viola, and Auld Lang Syne besides, I was much hurt, and defended myself in a tone of pique which made Miss Woolmer smile and say she was far from blaming me, but that she thought I ought to count the cost of my remaining at Arghouse.  And then she told me that the whole county was up in arms against the new comers, not only from old association of their name with revolutionary notions, but because the old Miss Stympsons, of Lake Side, who had connections in New South Wales, had set it abroad that the poor boys were ruffians, companions of the double-dyed villain Prometesky, and that Harold in especial was a marked man, who had caused the death of his own wife in a frenzy of intoxication.

At this I fairly laughed.  Harold, at his age, who never touched liquor, and had lived a sort of hermit life in the Bush, to be saddled with a wife only to have destroyed her!  The story contradicted itself by its own absurdity; and those two Miss Stympsons were well-known scandal-mongers.  Miss Woolmer never believed a story of theirs without sifting, but she had been in a manner commissioned to let me know that society was determined not to accept Eustace and Harold Alison, and was irate at my doing so.  Mothers declared that they should be very sorry to give poor Lucy Alison up, but that they could not have their children brought into contact with young men little better than convicts, and whom they would, besides, call my cousins, instead of my nephews.  “I began to suspect it,” I said, “when nobody left cards but Mr. Lawless and Peter Parsons.”

“And that is the society they are to be left to?”

“But I shall not leave them,” I cried.  “Why should I, to please Miss Stympson and Lord Erymanth?  I shall stand by my own brothers’ sons against all the world.”

“And if they be worthy, Lucy, your doing so is the best chance of their weathering the storm.  See! is not that one of them?  The grand-looking giant one, who moves like a king of men.  He is Ambrose’s son, is he not?  What a pity he is not the squire!”

Harold was, in effect, issuing from the toy-shop, carrying an immense kite on his arm, like a shield, while Dora frisked round in admiration, and a train of humbler admirers flocked in the rear.