"
"Listen, then. Melville Dale had a sister, towards whom their father
conceived undue and unjust partiality (according to the popular
version) from their earliest childhood. This sister, Henrietta Dale,
married, when very young, a country baronet of good fortune, one Sir
George Verner, and thereby still further pleased her father, and
secured his favour. Melville Dale, on the contrary, opposed the old
gentleman in everything, and ultimately crowned the edifice of his
offences by publishing a deistical treatise, which made a considerable
sensation at the time of its appearance, and caused the author's
expulsion from Balliol, where he had already attained a bad eminence by
numerous escapades of the Shelley order. This proceeding so incensed
his father that he made a will, in the heat of his anger, by which he
disinherited Melville Dale, and left the whole of his fortune to his
daughter, Lady Verner. If he repented this summary and vindictive
proceeding, neither I nor any one else can tell. The disinherited son
reformed his life very soon after the breach between himself and his
father, and was lucky enough to win the affections of Sir Oswald
Eversleigh's sister. But he was too proud to ask for his father's
forgiveness, and the father died a year after Douglas Dale's birth--
never having seen Mrs. Dale or his grandchildren. At the time of her
father's death, Lady Verner had no children, and she was, I believe,
disposed to treat her brother very generously; but he was an obstinate,
headstrong man, and persisted in believing that she had purposely done
him injury with his father.
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