Underrate it now--then it was a truly justifiable anxiety: insomuch that you heard people of station, eminent titled persons, asking, like the commonest low Radicals, whether it was prudent legislation to permit of the inheritance of such vast wealth by a young man, little more than a boy, and noted for freaks.

And some declared it could not be allowed for foreign monks to have a claim to inherit English property.

There was a general consent, that if the Earl of Fleetwood went to the extreme of making over his property to those monks, he should be pronounced insane and incapable.

Ultimately the world was a little pacified by hearing that a portion of it was entailed, Esslemont and the Welsh mines.
So it might be; but what if he had no child! The marriage amazing everybody scarcely promised fruit, it was thought.

Countess Livia, much besought for her opinion, scouted the possibility.