not at all. A child may feel the intellectual
inferiority of its mother, and no great
harm ensues. When the inferiority is
moral, there can be but one result. Maud
had never known her own mother, but
Lady Herriesson had stood in this light
towards her since she was four years old,
and Maud despised her—despised her for
her marriage, and yet more for her adoption,
without scruple, of all Sir Andrew's
worldly views. And although Lady
Herriesson was really fond of her stepdaughter
in her feeble weak-backed way, she had
grown to regard her a little with the eyes
of Sir Andrew as a sadly headstrong girl,
who had imbibed all sorts of dangerous
notions, Heaven only knew where! and
whose future was a very present source
of anxiety. She sighed much when she
thought of Maud, and yet more when she
talked of her, which she did with great
candour to some of her friends, who
afterwards dilated to the world at large on Sir
Andrew's forbearance towards "that head-
strong unmanageable girl," and on that
sweet Lady Herriesson's cross, in being
burdened with such a stepdaughter.

They were right; Sir Andrew's
forbearance was great. Seen from his point
of view—considering all he had done—it
was almost apostolic, this forbearance. He
had married Mrs. Pomeroy from her lodgings
at Torquay, when she had nothing but
her miserable four hundred a year; he had
not sent her daughter to school as many a
man would have insisted on doing, but had
taken her to live at Mortlands with them;
he had given her a horse to ride, and had
sent her to London in the season, and had
even had a ball in honour of her introduction
to society. Sir Andrew could not forget
these things. And therefore did his
forbearance appear apostolic in his own
eyes when he spoke to Lady Herriesson of
his stepdaughter's opposition to all his
wishes and opinions. Two natures, indeed,
more diametrically adverse to each other
could not be found. All that was
established by usage, all that the world
accepted as right and fitting, found favour in
the eyes of Sir Andrew Herriesson. A
hard, just man, a magistrate, an active
visitor of gaols and reformatories, a
subscriber to numberless charities, schools,
and institutes, this county Pharisee thanked
Heaven, every morning, that he was not as
other men were; but that in time all might
behold justice, virtue, and munificence
personified. He could lose his temper like
better men, at times, and, under provocation,
could use strong language. The
provocation, however, must be very great.
In this instance, the humiliating spectacle
of a great and good man, mastered by his
passion, was not often afforded to the world.
He was dull and pompous, but then he
relished dulness and pomposity. A joke
was a very terrible thing in his hands. He
talked after dinner to the three or four
neighbours who were occasionally invited
to his table, of subsoiling, and prison
discipline, the disease in the potatoes, and the
prospects of the coming election. He read
the Times, and the reports of select
committees; and he rode once or twice a week
into the county town of Scornton, nine or
ten miles off, on a small, powerful grey
cob, followed by a stately groom, mounted
upon a horse seventeen hands high. Four
great parties were assembled at Mortlands
in the course of the year, in the formation
of which the social importance of the
guests was the only consideration, and very
grand cheerless assemblages they were.
The rest of the year, except two months
in London, was passed in almost complete
solitude by the family at Mortlands. One
or two neighbours—men who laughed at
Sir Andrew behind his back, but who
never failed to accept his invitations—were
occasionally asked to dinner: never when
the four great festivals were being held,
but at odd seasons, when Sir Andrew
chanced to meet his humbler brother-
magistrates on the bench, or at some public
meeting in the county town. The rector
of the parish (who had another living some
four miles distant, where he resided) and
the curate, Mr. Miles, who lived in a
cottage at the park gates, over against the
church, were likewise bidden to the great
man's table from time to time, Miles rather
more frequently than the others; perhaps
by reason of his proximity, and that it was
convenient to send to him when there was
an odd number at table; partly, no doubt,
because he was unmarried. Not very often were
the rector's wife and daughters included
in the reverend gentleman's invitation, but
once a year, at least, that ceremony was gone
through. Why did any of them—they, or
poor old Squire Hepworth's family at the
Grange, or the Dykes, who were as good a
race as the Herriessons, only impoverished
by two generations of spendthrifts—why
did any of them endure an ordeal which
they regarded with nervous apprehension
for days beforehand, and which was
productive of neither profit nor pleasure?
Because, like Nebuchadnezzar, we set up a