What a cold-hearted, ungenerous wretch he must have been!  That will be the verdict against him.  But the verdict will be untrue.  Cold-hearted and ungenerous he was; but he was no wretch as men and women are now-a-days called wretches.  He was chilly hearted, but yet quite capable of enough love to make him a good son, a good husband, and a good father too.  And though he was ungenerous from the nature of his temperament, he was not close-fisted or over covetous.  And he was a just man, desirous of obtaining nothing that was not fairly his own.  But, in truth, the artists have been so much in the habit of painting for us our friends’ faces without any of those flaws and blotches with which work and high living are apt to disfigure us, that we turn in disgust from a portrait in which the roughnesses and pimples are made apparent.

But it was essential that he should now do something, and before he sat down to dinner he did show Clara’s letter to his mother.  ‘Mother,’ he said, as he sat himself down in her little room upstairs and she knew well by the tone of his voice, and by the mode of his address, that there was to be a solemn occasion, and a serious deliberative council on the present existing family difficulty ’mother, of course I have intended to let you know what is the nature of Clara’s answer to my letter.’

’I am glad there is to be no secret between us, Frederic.  You know how I dislike secrets in families.’  As she said this she took the letter out of her son’s hands with an eagerness that was almost greedy.  As she read it, he stood over her, watching her eyes, as they made their way down the first page and on to the second, and across to the third, and so, gradually on, till the whole reading was accomplished.  What Clara had written about her Cousin Will, Lady Aylmer did not quite understand; and on this point now she was so little anxious that she passed over that portion of the letter readily.  But when she came to Mrs Askerton and the allusions to herself, she took care to comprehend the meaning and weight of every word.  ’Divide your words and mine!  Why should we want to divide them?  Not agree with me about Mrs Askerton!  How is it possible that any decent young woman should not agree with me!  It is a matter in which there is no room for a doubt.  True the story true!  Of course it is true.  Does she not know that it would not have reached her from Aylmer Park if it were not true?  Provocation!  Badly treated!  Went away!  Married to Colonel Askerton as soon as Captain Berdmore died!  Why, Frederic, she cannot have been taught to understand the first principle of morals in life!  And she that was so much with my poor sister!  Well, well!’ The reader should understand that the late Mrs Winterfield and Lady Aylmer had never been able to agree with each other on religious subjects.  ’Remember that they are married.  Why should we remember anything of the kind?  It does not make an atom of difference to the woman’s character.  Repented!