there was concerned only the first-born and least loved of the
house.

While the girls pursued these innocent deliberations, and reasoned
themselves into conviction, the Squire too sat late--much later than
usual. He had gone with Frank to the library, and sat there in
half-stupefied quietness, which the Curate could not see without
alarm, and from which he roused himself up now and then to wander off
into talk, which always began with Gerald, and always came back to his
own anxieties and his disappointed hopes in his eldest son. "If Jack
had been the man he ought to have been, I'd have telegraphed for him,
and he'd have managed it all," said the Squire, and then relapsed
once more into silence. "For neither you nor I are men of the world,
Frank," he would resume again, after a pause of half an hour,
revealing pitifully how his mind laboured under the weight of this
absorbing thought. The Curate sat up with him in the dimly-lighted
library, feeling the silence and the darkness to his heart. He could
not assist his father in those dim ranges of painful meditation.
Grieved as he was, he could not venture to compare his own distress
with the bitterness of the Squire, disappointed in all his hopes and
in the pride of his heart; and then the young man saw compensations
and heroisms in Gerald's case which were invisible to the unheroic
eyes of Mr Wentworth, who looked at it entirely from a practical point
of view, and regarded with keen mortification an event which would lay
all the affairs of the Wentworths open to general discussion, and
invite the eye of the world to a renewed examination of his domestic
skeletons. Everything had been hushed and shut up in the Hall for at
least an hour, when the Squire got up at last and lighted his candle,
and held out his hand to his son--"This isn't a very cheerful visit
for you, Frank," he said; "but we'll try again to-morrow, and have one
other talk with Gerald. Couldn't you read up some books on the
subject, or think of something new to say to him? God bless my soul!
if I were as young and as much accustomed to talking as you are, I'd
surely find out some argument," said the Squire, with a momentary
spark of temper, which made his son feel more comfortable about him.
"It's your business to convince a man when he's wrong. We'll try
Gerald once more, and perhaps something may come of it; and as for
Jack--" Here the Squire paused, and shook his head, and let go his
son's hand. "I supp