Edward.
However, this was the means of my obtaining some curious
enlightenments. A dinner-party was in contemplation, and she was
dismayed at the choice of the fashionable London hour of seven, and
still more by finding that the Fordyces were to be among the guests.
She was too well-bred to manifest her feelings to her hosts, but
alone with me, she could not refrain from expressing her
astonishment to me, all the more when she heard this was reciprocity
for an invitation that it had not been possible to accept. Her poor
dear uncle would never hear of intercourse with Hillside. On being
asked why, she repeated what Chapman had said, that he could not
endure any one connected with Mrs. Hannah More and her canting,
humbugging set, as the ungodly old man had chosen to call them,
imbuing even this good woman with evil prejudices against their
noble work at Cheddar.
'Besides this, Fordyces and Winslows could never be friends, since
the Fordyces had taken on themselves to dispute the will, and say it
had been improperly obtained.'
'What will?'
'Mrs. Winslow's--Margaret Fordyce that was. She was the heiress,
and had every right to dispose of her property.'
'But that was more than a hundred years ago!'
'So it was, my dear; but though the law gave it to us--to my uncle's
grandfather (or great-grandfather, was it?)--those Fordyces never
could rest content.
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