After such arrangements as I found necessary were completed, we both
went down to the parlour, a large wainscotted room, hung round with
grim old portraits, and, as I was not sorry to see, containing, in its
ample grate, a large and cheerful fire. Here my cousin had leisure to
talk more at her ease; and from her I learned something of the manners
and the habits of the two remaining members of her family, whom I had
not yet seen. On my arrival I had known nothing of the family
among whom I was come to reside, except that it consisted of three
individuals, my uncle, and his son and daughter, Lady Tyrrell having
been long dead; in addition to this very scanty stock of information,
I shortly learned from my communicative companion, that my uncle was,
as I had suspected, completely retired in his habits, and besides
that, having been, so far back as she could well recollect, always
rather strict, as reformed rakes frequently become, he had latterly
been growing more gloomily and sternly religious than heretofore. Her
account of her brother was far less favourable, though she did not say
anything directly to his disadvantage. From all that I could gather
from her, I was led to suppose that he was a specimen of the idle,
coarse-mannered, profligate "_squirearchy_"--a result which might
naturally have followed from the circumstance of his being, as it
were, outlawed from society, and driven for companionship to grades
below his own--enjoying, too, the dangerous prerogative of spending
a good deal of money.
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