was a man so reticent and undemonstrative in his manner that he
had never known how to make confidential friends of his children.
In his sons hitherto he had not taken pride. They were gallant,
well-grown, handsome boys with a certain dash of cleverness,--more
like their mother than their father; but they had not as yet done
anything as he would have made them do it. But the girl, in the
perfection of her beauty, in the quiescence of her manner, in the
nature of her studies, and in the general dignity of her bearing,
had seemed to be all that he had desired. And now she had engaged
herself, behind his back, to the younger son of a county squire!

But his anger against Mrs Finn was hotter than the anger against
anyone in his own family.



CHAPTER 6

Major Tifto

Major Tifto had lately become a member of the Beargarden Club,
under the auspices of his friend Lord Silverbridge. It was
believed, by those who had made some inquiry into the matter, that
the Major had really served a campaign as a volunteer in the
Carlist army in the north of Spain. When, therefore, it was
declared by someone else that he was not a major at all, his
friends were able to contradict the assertion, and to impute it to
slander. Instances were brought up,--declared by these friends to be
innumerable, but which did, in truth, amount to three of four,--of
English gentlemen who had come up from a former Carlist war,