Even the smiling manner which ignored their six months'
quarrel had annoyed him hugely. It was a piece of condescension--an
impertinence. Oh, of course Chicksands was the popular man, the
greatest power in the county, looked up to, and listened to by
everybody. The Squire knew very well that he himself was ostracized,
even hated; that there had been general chuckling in the
neighbourhood over his rough handling by the County Committee, and
that it would please a good many people to see all his woods
commandeered and 'cut clean.'
Six months before, his inborn pugnacity would only have amused
itself with the situation. He was a rebel and a litigant by nature.
Smooth waters had never attracted him.
Yet now--though he would never have admitted it--he was often
conscious of a flagging will and a depressed spirit. The loneliness
of his life, due entirely to himself, had, during Elizabeth
Bremerton's absence, begun sharply to find him out. He had no true
fatherly relation with any of his children. Desmond loved him--why,
he didn't know.
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