His Grace — page 151: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HIS GRACE. | 145 have been reluctant to answer, with a due regard to discretion ; but it did not produce that effect upon him. He only laughed and said: “Oh, that was all, eb’f.7 We had advanced some little distance on our way without exchanging another word when he turned upon me with a sudden and unexpected question. ““T say, Martyn, did you ever hear what was the cause of my old uncle’s quarrel with my father?” I shook my head. “I never heard anything about it; I never was in the way of hearing. Was there any Cause, except incompatibility of temper ?” ‘“That’s just what I don’t know, and what I have often wondered. I can’t ask my mother, because she gets distressed and begins to cry and all that, you know, if the subject is introduced. I thought perhaps Lady Deverell might have told you something. Whatever it was, I suspect that beggar Paul knows a good deal about it.” He added, with a short laugh, after pausing for a minute or two: “ Well, I’ve put our cool friend Paul’s back up, anyhow. Do you know that, when we were up at the stables just now, he dragged me off, upon the pretence of showing me a couple of colts, to ask me in plain language what my intentions were with regard to Miss St. George!”’ : “Oh, he did, did he?” said I. “And what answer did you make?” “The only answer that could be made; I said I would thank him to mind his own business. Then he had the cheek to tell me that I should consult my own interests best by keeping friends with him; that he felt more or less responsible for Miss St. George while she was his guest, and that, if I chose to defy him, he might be Eomicboo “S €o m