villain Prometesky, and that Harold in especial was a marked man, who
had caused the death of his own wife in a frenzy of intoxication.

At this I fairly laughed. Harold, at his age, who never touched
liquor, and had lived a sort of hermit life in the Bush, to be
saddled with a wife only to have destroyed her! The story
contradicted itself by its own absurdity; and those two Miss
Stympsons were well-known scandal-mongers. Miss Woolmer never
believed a story of theirs without sifting, but she had been in a
manner commissioned to let me know that society was determined not to
accept Eustace and Harold Alison, and was irate at my doing so.
Mothers declared that they should be very sorry to give poor Lucy
Alison up, but that they could not have their children brought into
contact with young men little better than convicts, and whom they
would, besides, call my cousins, instead of my nephews. "I began to
suspect it," I said, "when nobody left cards but Mr. Lawless and
Peter Parsons."

"And that is the society they are to be left to?"

"But I shall not leave them," I cried. "Why should I, to please Miss
Stympson and Lord Erymanth? I shall stand by my own brothers' sons
against all the world."

"And if they be worthy, Lucy, your doing so is the best chance of
their weathering the storm. See! is not that one of them? The
grand-looking giant one, who moves like a king of men. He is
Ambrose's son, is he not? What a pity he is not the squire!"

Harold was, in effect, issuing from the toy-shop, carrying an immense