Page:Arminell, a social romance (1896).djvu/130

122 Julia. No—I think not—no, I cannot have been chilled there. I do not know what it is. Well—I will not say that either. To tell you the whole truth, I am worried."

"Worried? About what?"

"I am uneasy, for one thing, about Arminell. She has got queer fancies in her head. Giles also is not well; and there is something further—in itself nothing, but though a trifle it is distressing me greatly."

"What is it?"

"The leaders of my choice pines, which I had planted about the grounds, have been maliciously cut off. The thing has been done out of spite, and to hurt me, and yet the real sufferers are yet unborn. A hundred years hence these trees would have been admired for their stateliness—and now they are mutilated. I shall be dead and forgotten long before any tree I have put in comes to size. I am pained—this has been aimed at me, to wound me. I fear this has been done because I have refused to allow my house to be undermined."

"Who can have done it?"

"I do not know. If I did know, I would not prosecute. That is one of the privileges of our privileged class—to bear injuries and impertinences without resentment. I am hurt—I am hurt greatly. The matter may be a trifle"—his lordship stood up—"but—after all I have done for the Orleigh people—it does seem unkind."

Lady Lamerton put out her hand, and took that of her husband. "Never mind," she said; "he who did it will come to regret it."

"The injury does not touch the Lamertons alone," said his lordship; "we throw open the park and gardens every Saturday to the public, and we allow Bands of Hope, and Girls' Friendly Societies, and Choirs, and all sorts of agglomerations of men to come here and picnic in our grounds and strew them with sandwich papers and empty