But, look you, Stephen! you have no children; bring up young Lionel as your heir, and let it descend to him after you." And that is how Stephen Verner had inherited Verner's Pride.
Neighbouring gossipers, ever fonder of laying down the law for other people's business than of minding their own, protested against it among themselves as a piece of injustice.

Had they cause?
Many very just-minded persons would consider that Stephen Verner possessed more fair claim to it than the boy at Eton.
I will tell you of one who did not consider so.

And that was the widow of Sir Lionel Verner.

When she arrived from India with her other two children, a son and daughter, she found old Mr.Verner dead, and Stephen the inheritor.

Deeply annoyed and disappointed, Lady Verner deemed that a crying wrong had been perpetrated upon her and hers.