"Shall I send Allan away?" said my father, pointing to me.

"No; let him bide. He will not understand." Nor, indeed, did I at the
time, but I remembered every word, and in after years their meaning grew
on me.

"First tell me," he went on, "how are they?" and he pointed upwards with
his thumb.

"My wife and two of the boys are beyond hope," my father answered, with
a groan. "I do not know how it will go with the third. The Lord's will
be done!"

"The Lord's will be done," the squire echoed, solemnly. "And now,
Quatermain, listen--my wife's gone."

"Gone!" my father answered. "Who with?"

"With that foreign cousin of hers. It seems from a letter she left me
that she always cared for him, not for me. She married me because she
thought me a rich English milord. Now she has run through my property,
or most of it, and gone. I don't know where. Luckily, she did not care
to encumber her new career with the child; Stella is left to me."

"That is what comes of marrying a papist, Carson," said my father. That
was his fault; he was as good and charitable a man as ever lived, but he
was bigoted. "What are you going to do--follow her?"

He laughed bitterly in answer.