CHAPTER X.A Hot Afternoon.
General Braddock and the other guests of Castlewood being duly consigned to their respective quarters, the boys retired to their own room, and there poured out to one another their opinions respecting the great event of the day.

They would not bear such a marriage--no.

Was the representative of the Marquises of Esmond to marry the younger son of a colonial family, who had been bred up as a land-surveyor?
Castlewood, and the boys at nineteen years of age, handed over to the tender mercies of a stepfather of three-and-twenty! Oh, it was monstrous! Harry was for going straightway to his mother in her bedroom--where her black maidens were divesting her ladyship of the simple jewels and fineries which she had assumed in compliment to the feast--protesting against the odious match, and announcing that they would go home, live upon their little property there, and leave her for ever, if the unnatural union took place.
George advocated another way of stopping it, and explained his plan to his admiring brother.

"Our mother," he said, "can't marry a man with whom one or both of us has been out on the field, and who has wounded us or killed us, or whom we have wounded or killed.

We must have him out, Harry." Harry saw the profound truth conveyed in George's statement, and admired his brother's immense sagacity.