judicial family-eye he surveyed the eligible women of his acquaintance.
It was, no doubt, to his disadvantage that already an heir lay "mewling
and puking in the nurse's arms;" for a woman who might willingly be
mother to the inheritor of such a property as his, might not find
attractive the notion of her first being her husband's second son. But
slips between cups and lips were not always on the wrong side! Such a
moon-calf as Robina's son could not with justice represent the handsomest
man and one of the handsomest women of their time. The heir that fate had
palmed upon him might very well be doomed to go the way so many infants
went!

He spread the report that the boy was sickly. A notion that he was not
likely to live prevailed about Mortgrange, which, however originated, was
nourished doubtless by the fact that he was so seldom seen. In reality,
however, there was not a healthier child in all England than Richard
Lestrange.

Sir Wilton's relations took as little interest in the heir as himself,
and there was no inducement for any of them to visit Mortgrange; the
aunt-mother, therefore, had her own way with him. She was not liked in
the house. The servants said she cared only for the little toad of a
baronet, and would do nothing for her comfort. They had, however, just a
shadow of respect for her: if she encouraged no familiarity, she did not
meddle, and was independent of their aid. Even the milking of the cow
which had been, through her persistence, set apart for the child, she did
herself. She sought no influence in the house, and was nothing loved and
little heeded.

Sir Wilton had not again seen his heir, who was now almost a year old,
when the rumour reached Mortgrange that the baronet was about to be