Betty thought it high time to be gone, and
as she took leave, was requested to send up her little brother to
play with his cousins. This did not prove a success, for Eugene
constituted himself champion to Amoret, of whom Archer was very
jealous, though she was his devoted and submissive slave. Master
Delavie's rustic ways were in consequence pronounced to be too rude
and rough for the dainty little town-bred boy, the fine ladies' pet.
The Major dined at the Great House, but came home so much dismayed
and disgusted that he could hardly mention even to Betty what he had
seen and heard. He only groaned out at intervals, "This is what the
service is coming to! That fop to be that poor lad's commanding
officer! That rake to be always hovering about my cousin!"
Others spoke out more plainly. Stories were afloat or orgies ending
in the gallant Colonel being under the supper table, a thing only too
common, but not in the house of a solitary lady who had only lately
quitted the carousers. Half the dependants on the estate were
complaining of the guest's swaggering overbearing treatment of
themselves, or of his insolence to their wives or daughters; and
Betty lived in a dreadful unnamed terror lest he should offer some
impertinence to her father which the veteran's honour might not brook.
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