apprehensions. Through all his difficulties, he had maintained his
honour unblemished; a thousand traits of amiability and kindness of heart
made him popular and beloved. He was nobody's enemy but his own. His
very distresses--the prospect of his ruin, if left unassisted by Sir
Miles's testamentary dispositions--were arguments in his favour. And,
after all, though Lucretia was a nearer relation, Vernon was in truth the
direct male heir, and according to the usual prejudices of family,
therefore, the fitter representative of the ancient line. With these
feelings and views, he had invited Vernon to his house, and we have seen
already that his favourable impressions had been confirmed by the visit.

And here we must say that Vernon himself had been brought up in boyhood
and youth to regard himself the presumptive inheritor of Laughton. It
had been, from time immemorial, the custom of the St. Johns to pass by
the claims of females in the settlement of the entails; from male to male
the estate had gone, furnishing warriors to the army, and senators to the
State. And if when Lucretia first came to Sir Miles's house the bright
prospect seemed somewhat obscure, still the mesalliance of the mother,
and Sir Miles's obstinate resentment thereat, seemed to warrant the
supposition that he would probably only leave to the orphan the usual
portion of a daughter of the house, and that the lands would go in their
ordinary destination. This belief, adopted passively, and as a thing of
course, had had a very prejudicial effect upon Vernon's career. What
mattered that he overenjoyed his youth, that the subordinate property of
the Vernons, a paltry four or five thousand pounds a year, went a little
too fast,--the splendid estates of Laughton would recover all. From this
dream he had only been awakened, two or three years before, by an
attachment he had formed to the portionless daughter of an earl; and the
Grange being too far encumbered to allow him the proper settlements which
the lady's family required, it became a matter of importance to ascertain