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136 LITTLE LORD FAUNTLEROY.
a
or sorrow or poverty in any house, the little brougham often. stood
before the door.
‘Do you know,” said Fauntleroy once, "they all say, ‘ God bless
you!’ when they see her, and the children are glad. There are
some who go to her house to be taught to sew. She says she feels
so rich now that she wants to help the poor ones.”
It had not displeased the Earl to find that the mother of his
heir had a beautiful young face and looked as much like a lady as if
she had been a duchess; and in one way it did not displease him to
know that she was popular and beloved by the poor. And yet he
was often conscious of a hard, jealous pang when he saw how she
filled her child’s heart and how the boy clung to her as his best
beloved. The old man would have desired to stand first himself
and have no rival.
Lhat same morning he drew up his horse on an elevated point
of the moor over which they rode, and made a gesture with his
whip, over the broad, beautiful landscape spread before them.
‘Do you know that all that land belongs to me?” he said to
Fauntleroy.
‘Does it?”’ answered Fauntleroy. " How much it is to belong to
one person, and how beautiful !”
‘Do you know that some day it will all belong to you—that
and a great deal more ?”
“To me!” exclaimed Fauntleroy in rather an awe-stricken voice.
“When?”
‘“When I am dead,” his grandfather answered.
“Then I don’t want it,” said Fauntleroy; "1 want you to live
always.”
‘That s kind,” answered the Earl in his dry way; “nevertheless,
some day it will all be yours—some day you will be the Earl of
Dorincourt.”