And he, as soon as it was evident that Mrs. Melrose would not take
his advice, and that legal proceedings must be renounced, felt a
natural slackening of interest in his mother's guests. He was perfectly
kind and polite to them but Netta's cowardice disgusted him; and it was a
personal disappointment to be thus balked of that public campaign against
Melrose's enormities which would have satisfied the just and long-baffled
feelings of a whole county; and--incidentally--would surely have unmasked
a greedy and unscrupulous adventurer.
Meanwhile the whole story of Mrs. Melrose and her daughter had spread
rapidly through the neighbourhood. The local papers, now teeming with
attacks on Melrose, and the management of the Melrose property, had
fastened with avidity on the news of their arrival. "Mrs. Edmund Melrose
and her daughter, after an absence of twenty years have arrived in
Cumbria. They are now staying at Duddon Castle with Countess Tatham. Mr.
Claude Faversham is at Threlfall Tower." These few sentences served as
symbols of a dramatic situation which was being discussed in every house
of the district, in the farms and cottages no less eagerly than by the
Andovers and the Bartons. The heiress of Threlfall was not dead! After
twenty years she and her mother had returned to claim their rights from
the Ogre; and Duddon Castle, the headquarters of all that was powerful
and respected in the county, had taken up their cause. Meanwhile the
little heiress had been, it seemed, supplanted.
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