"
If I did not object to the dog-cart and Daniel O'Rourke immediately,
we should be there by luncheon time. I objected to nothing that
Harry drove, but all the way to Erymanth not ten words passed, and
those were matters of necessity. I had come to the perception that
when he did not want to speak it was better to let him take his own
time.
Lord Erymanth was anxious, not only about Dermot's health, and his
sister's strength and spirits, but he wanted to hear what Harold
thought of the place and of the tone of the country; and, after our
meal, when he grew more confidential, he elicited short plain answers
full of information in short compass, and not very palatable. The
estate was "not going on well." "Did Harold think well of the
agent?" "He had been spoilt." "How?" "By calls for supplies."
"Were the people attached to Dermot?" "To a certain degree." "Would
it be safe for him to live there?" "He ought."
Lord Erymanth entirely assented to this, and we found that he had all
along held that his sister had been in error for not having remained
at Killy Marey, and brought up her son to his duties as a landlord,
whatever the danger; though of course she, poor thing, could hardly
be expected to see it in that light. He evidently viewed this
absenteeism as the cause of the wreck of Dermot's youth, and those
desultory habits of self-indulgence and dissipation which were
overcoming that which was good and noble in him; and the good old man
showed that he blamed himself for what he had conceded to his sister
in the first shock of her misfortune.
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