Your wildness and eccentricity
will be turned against us and so distorted and misrepresented as to ruin
us forever."
"Mother! mother! he is not so wicked as that."
"He is furious in his temper and violent in his impulses--he will do all
that under the influence of disappointment and passion, however he may
afterwards repent his injustice. You must not disappoint him,
Jacquelina."
"I disappoint him? Why, Mimmy, Luckenough does not belong to me. And if
he wants Grim to be his successor, why, as I have heard aunty ask him,
does he not make him his heir?"
"There are reasons, I suspect, my dear, why he cannot do so. I think he
holds the property by such a tenure, that he cannot alienate it from the
family. And the only manner in which he can bestow it upon Dr. Grimshaw,
will be through his wife, if the doctor should marry some relative."
"That is it, hey? Well! I will not be made a sumpter-mule to carry this
rich gift over to Dr. Grimshaw--even if there is no other way of
conveyance. Mother! what is the reason the professor is such a favorite
with uncle?"
"My dear, I don't know, but I have often had my suspicions."
"Of what, Mimmy?"
"Of a very near, though unacknowledged relationship; don't question me
any further upon that particular point, my dear, for I really know
nothing whatever about it.
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