wants to be comforted.'

'Don't waste your compassion, my dear; few men need it less. With his
property, those moors to shoot over, his own master, and with health to
enjoy it, there are plenty who would change with him for all your pity,
my silly little Amy.'

'Surely not, with that horrible ancestry.'

'All very well to plume oneself upon. I rather covet that ghost
myself.'

'Well, if you watched his face, I think you would be sorry for him.'

'I am tired of the sound of his name. One fifth of November is enough
in the year. Here, find something to read to me among that trumpery.'

Amy read till she was summoned to tea, when she found a conversation
going on about Philip, on whose history Sir Guy did not seem fully
informed. Philip was the son of Archdeacon Morville, Mrs. Edmonstone's
brother, an admirable and superior man, who had been dead about five
years. He left three children, Margaret and Fanny, twenty-five and
twenty-three years of age, and Philip, just seventeen. The boy was at
the head of his school, highly distinguished for application and good
conduct; he had attained every honour there open to him, won golden
opinions from all concerned with him, and made proof of talents which
could not have failed to raise him to the highest university
distinctions. He was absent from home at the time of his father's
death, which took place after so short an illness, that there had been
no time to summon him back to Stylehurst. Very little property was