Not a few on whom Lady Margaret had never called, and
whom she would never in any way acknowledge again, were invited;
nor did the knowledge of what it meant cause many of them to
decline the questionable honor--which fact carried in it the best
justification of which the meanness and insult were capable. Mrs.
Wardour accepted for herself and Letty; but in their case Lady
Margaret did call, and in person give the invitation. Godfrey
positively refused to accompany them. He would not be patronized,
he said; "--and by an inferior," he added to himself.
Mr. Mortimer was the illiterate son of a literary father who had
reaped both money and fame. The son spent the former, on the
strength of the latter married an earl's daughter, and thereupon
began to embody in his own behavior his ideas of how a nobleman
ought to carry himself; whence, from being only a small, he
became an objectionable man, and failed of being amusing by
making himself offensive. He had never manifested the least
approach to neighborliness with Godfrey, although their houses
were almost within a stone's throw of each other. Had Wardour
been an ordinary farmer, of whose presuming on the acquaintance
there could have been no danger, Mortimer would doubtless have
behaved differently; but as Wardour had some pretensions--namely,
old family, a small, though indeed _very_ small, property of
his own, a university education, good horses, and the habits and
manners of a gentleman--the men scarcely even saluted when they
met.
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