betrothed her to the gentleman discussed or not.

The Squire had often gone out of the house in this manner, declaring
that he would never return, but he had always reappeared in the
morning. The present occasion, however, was different in the issue:
next day she was told that her father had ridden to his estate at
Falls-Park early in the morning on business with his agent, and
might not come back for some days.


Falls-Park was over twenty miles from King's-Hintock Court, and was
altogether a more modest centre-piece to a more modest possession
than the latter. But as Squire Dornell came in view of it that
February morning, he thought that he had been a fool ever to leave
it, though it was for the sake of the greatest heiress in Wessex.
Its classic front, of the period of the second Charles, derived from
its regular features a dignity which the great, battlemented,
heterogeneous mansion of his wife could not eclipse. Altogether he
was sick at heart, and the gloom which the densely-timbered park
threw over the scene did not tend to remove the depression of this
rubicund man of eight-and-forty, who sat so heavily upon his
gelding. The child, his darling Betty: there lay the root of his
trouble. He was unhappy when near his wife, he was unhappy when
away from his little girl; and from this dilemma there was no
practicable escape. As a consequence he indulged rather freely in
the pleasures of the table, became what was called a three bottle
man, and, in his wife's estimation, less and less presentable to her
polite friends from town.

He was received by the two or three old servants who were in charge