'
'We shall find out all about this Mr. Hamleigh--no Hammond--in a day or
two,' replied her ladyship, placidly; 'and in the meantime we must
tolerate him, and be grateful to him if he reconcile Maulevrier to
remaining at Fellside for the next six weeks.'
Lesbia was silent. She did not consider Maulevrier's presence at
Fellside an unmitigated advantage, or, indeed, his presence anywhere.
Those two were not sympathetic. Maulevrier made fun of his elder
sister's perfections, chaffed her intolerably about the great man she
was going to captivate, in her first season, the great houses in which
she was going to reign. Lesbia despised him for that neglect of all his
opportunities of culture which had left him, after the most orthodox and
costly curriculum, almost as ignorant as a ploughboy. She despised a man
whose only delight was in horse and hound, gun and fishing-tackle. Molly
would have cared very little for the guns or the fishing-tackle perhaps
in the abstract; but she cared for everything that interested
Maulevrier, even to the bagful of rats which were let loose in the
stable-yard sometimes, for the education of a particularly game
fox-terrier.
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