ndly and
rootedly he had clung to the idea of my marriage with the princess was
shown in his extinction after this blow.

My grandfather chose the moment as a fitting one to ask me for the last
time to take my side.

I replied, without offence in the tones of my voice, that I thought my
father need not lose me into the bargain, after what he had suffered
that day.

He just as quietly rejoined with a recommendation to me to divorce
myself for good and all from a scoundrel.

I took my father's arm: he was not in a state to move away unsupported.

My aunt Dorothy stood weeping; Janet was at the window, no friend to
either of us.

I said to her, 'You have your wish.'

She shook her head, but did not look back.

My grandfather watched me, step by step, until I had reached the door.

'You're going, are you?' he said. 'Then I whistle you off my fingers!'

An attempt to speak was made by my father in the doorway. He bowed wide
of the company, like a blind man. I led him out.

Dimness of sight spared me from seeing certain figures, which were at
the toll-bar of the pier, on the way to quit our shores. What I heard
was not of a character to give me faith in the sanity of the companion I
had chosen. He murmured it at first to himself:

'Waddy shall have her monument!'

My patience was not proof against the repetition of it aloud to me. Had
I been gentler I might have known that his nature was compelled to look
forward to something, and he discerned nothing in the future, save the
task of raising a memorial to a faithful servant.

CHAPTER LIII. THE HEIRESS PROVES THAT SHE INHERITS THE FEUD AND I GO DRIFTING

My grandfather lived eight months after a scene that had afforded him
high gratification at the heaviest cost a plain man can pay for his
pleasures: it killed him.

My father's supple nature helped him to survive it in apparently
unimpeded health, so that the world might well suppose him
unconquerable, as he meant that it should. But I, who was with him,
knew, though he never talked of his wounds, they had been driven into
his heart. He collapsed in speech, and became what he used to call 'one
of the ordinary nodding men,' forsaken of his swamping initiative. I
merely observed him; I did not invite his confidences, being myself in
no mood to give sympathy or to receive it. I was about as tender in my
care of him as a military escort bound to deliver up a captive alive.

I left him at Bulsted on my way