Mr. Carruthers of Poynings was secretly
uneasily jealous of the man who had died in his prime
many years before, and the son, who had been
first the young widow's sole consolation and then
her bitterest trial. The living and the dead
combined to displease Mr. Carruthers, and he would
have been unequivocably glad, only in decorous
secresy, could he have obtained any evidence to
prove that George Dallas was remarkably like
his father in all the defective points of his
personal appearance and in all the faults of his
character. But such evidence was not within his
reach, and Mr. Carruthers was reduced to hoping
in his secret heart that his suppositions were correct
on this point, and discovering a confirmation
of them in his wife's scrupulous silence
with regard to her first husband. She had
never, in their most confidential moments,
remarked on any likeness between George and his
father; had never, indeed, mentioned Captain
Dallas at all, which appeared extremely significant
to Mr. Carruthers, but, seeing that Captain
Dallas had been dead twelve years when his
widow became Mrs. Carruthers of Poynings,
would not have occasioned much surprise to the
world in general. Mr. Carruthers regarded
himself as his wife's benefactor, but she did not
partake of his views in that respect. The notion
which he entertained of his position with regard
to his niece Clare was better founded and more
reasonable.

The beautiful young heiress, who was an
unconscious and involuntary element in the standing
grievance of Mrs. Carruthers's life, was the
only child of Mr. Carruthers's brother, and the
sole inheritor of his property. Her father had
died while she was a little child, and her mother's
method of educating her has been already
described. She was attached to her uncle, but
was afraid of him; and she was happier and
more at ease at the Sycamores than at Poynings.
Of course Mr. Carruthers did not suspect his
niece of any such depravity of taste. It never
occurred to him that any one could fancy himself
or herself happier anywhere on the face
of the created globe than at Poynings; and
so Clare escaped the condemnation which she
would otherwise have received in no stinted
measure.

Accustomed to attach a wonderful amount of
importance to duties and responsibilities which
were his, if their due fulfilment could add to his
dignity and reputation, Mr. Carruthers was a
model of the uncle and guardian. He really
liked Clare very much indeed, and he was fully
persuaded that he loved her—a distinction he
would have learned to draw only if Clare had
been deprived of her possessions, and rendered
dependent on him. He spoke of her as "my
brother's heiress," and so thought of her, not as
"my brother's orphan child;" but in all
external and material respects Mr. Carruthers of
Poynings was an admirable guardian, and a
highly respectable specimen of the uncle tribe.
He would have been deeply shocked had he
discovered that any young lady in the county was
better dressed, better mounted, more
obsequiously waited upon, more accomplished, or
regarded by society as in any way more favoured
by fortune than Miss Carruthers—not of Poynings,
indeed, but the next thing to it, and likely
at some future day to enjoy that distinction.
Mr. Carruthers did not regret that he was
childless; he had never cared for children, and,
though not a keenly observant person, he had
noticed occasionally that the importance of a
rich man's heir was apt, in this irrepressibly
anticipative world, to outweigh the importance of
the rich man himself. No Carruthers on record
had ever had a large family, and, for his own
part, he liked the idea of a female heir to the
joint property of himself and his brother, who
should carry her own name in addition to her
husband's. He was determined on that. Unless
Clare married a nobleman, her husband should
take the name of Carruthers. Carruthers of
Poynings must not die out of the land. The
strange jealousy which was one of the underlying
constituents of Mr. Carruthers's character
came into play with regard to his niece and his
wife. Mrs. Carruthers loved the girl, and would
gladly have acted the part of a mother to her;
and as Clare's own mother had been a remarkably
mild specimen of maternal duty and affection,
she could have replaced that lady
considerably to Clare's advantage. But she had
soon perceived that this was not to be; her
husband's fidgety sense of his own importance, his
ever-present fear lest it should be trenched upon
or in any way slighted, interfered with her good
intentions. She knew the uselessness of
opposing the foible, though she did not understand
its source, and she relinquished the projects she
had formed.

Mr. Carruthers was incapable of believing
that his wife never once dreamed of resenting to
Clare the exclusion of George, for which the
girl's residence at Poynings had been assigned
as a reason, or that she would have despised
herself if such an idea had presented itself to her
mind, as she probably must have despised him
had she known how natural and inevitable he
supposed it to be on her part.

Thus it came to pass that the three persons
who lived together at Poynings had but little
real intimacy or confidence between them. Clare
was very happy; she had her own tastes and
pursuits, and ample means of gratifying them.
Her mother's brother and his wife, Sir Thomas
and Lady Boldero, with her cousin, their ugly
but clever and charming daughter, were much
attached to her, and she to them, and, when she
got away from Poynings to the Sycamores, Clare
acknowledged to herself that she enjoyed the
change very much, but was very happy at
Poynings nevertheless. The Sycamores had
another interest for her now, another association,
and the girl's life had entered upon a new
phase. Innocent, inexperienced, and romantic
as she was, inclined to hero-worship, and by no