Hall."

"You can't get a mouthful or air, or see the sun of a morning, for those
frightful mountains," he said with a peevish frown at them.

"Well, the lake at all events--that you _must_ admire, Sir Bale?"

"No ma'am, I don't admire the lake. I'd drain the lake if I could--I
hate the lake. There's nothing so gloomy as a lake pent up among barren
mountains. I can't conceive what possessed my people to build our house
down here, at the edge of a lake; unless it was the fish, and precious
fish it is--pike! I don't know how people digest it--_I_ can't. I'd as
soon think of eating a watchman's pike."

"I thought that having travelled so much abroad, you would have acquired
a great liking for that kind of scenery, Sir Bale; there is a great deal
of it on the Continent, ain't there?" said Mrs. Bedel. "And the
boating."

"Boating, my dear Mrs. Bedel, is the dullest of all things; don't you
think so? Because a boat looks very pretty from the shore, we fancy the
shore must look very pretty from a boat; and when we try it, we find we
have only got down into a pit and can see nothing rightly. For my part I
hate boating, and I hate the water; and I'd rather have my house, like
Haworth, at the edge of a moss, with good wholesome peat to look at, and
an open horizon--savage and stupid and bleak as all that is--than be
suffocated among impassable mountains, or upset in a black lake and
drowned like a kitten. O, there's luncheon in the next room; won't you
take some?"

CHAPTER V

Mrs. Julaper's Room

Sir Bale Mardykes being now established in his ancestral house, people
had time to form conclusions respecting him. It must be allowed he was
not popular. There was, perhaps, in his conduct something of the caprice
of contempt. At all events his temper and conduct were uncertain, and
his moods sometimes violent and insulting.

With respect to but one person was his conduct uniform, and that was
Philip Feltram. He was a sort of aide-de-camp near Sir Bale's person,
and chargeable with all the commissions and offices which could not be
suitably intrusted to a mere servant. But in many respects he was
treated worse than any servant of the Baronet's. Sir Bale swore at him,
and cursed him; laid the blame of everything that went wrong in house,
stable, or field upon his shoulders; railed at him, and used him, as
people said, worse than a dog.

Why did Feltram endure this contumelious life? What could he do but
endure it? was