Read "The Light of Scarthey" by Egerton Castle online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
A rarely failing characteristic of very warm-hearted and strongly impulsive people is their inability of graduating their likes and dislikes; a state of mind which cannot fail to lead to frequent alterations of temper.
On more than one occasion, since the domineering old lady had started upon her peregrinations, had her favour for the two brothers undergone reversal; but the ground Rupert gained by Adrian's offences was never of safe tenure. At the present hour, under the elation of her victorious sally upon the hermit's pessimistic entrenchments -- the only thing in him of which she disapproved -- he at once resumed the warm place she liked to keep for him in her heart. And as a consequence "Master Rupert," as she contemptuously called the "locum tenens Squire," who, in the genealogical order of things, should have been a person of small importance, fell promptly into his original state of disgrace.