never thought to have
had a scamp for my son!"

Mrs. Pendyce's heart stopped fluttering.

"How dare you, Horace!" she cried.

The Squire, letting go the bed-rail, paced to and fro. There was
something savage in the sound of his footsteps through the utter silence.

"I've made up my mind," he said. "The estate----"

There broke from Mrs. Pendyce a torrent of words:

"You talk of the way you brought George up! You--you never understood
him! You--you never did anything for him! He just grew up like you all
grow up in this-----" But no word followed, for she did not know herself
what was that against which her soul had blindly fluttered its wings.
"You never loved him as I do! What do I care about the estate? I wish
it were sold! D'you think I like living here? D'you think I've ever
liked it? D'you think I've ever----" But she did not finish that saying:
D'you think I've ever loved you? "My boy a scamp! I've heard you laugh
and shake your head and say a hundred times: 'Young men will be young
men!' You think I don't know how you'd all go on if you dared! You
think I don't know how you talk among yourselves! As for gambling, you'd
gamble too, if you weren't afraid! And now George is in trouble----"

As suddenly as it had broken forth the torrent of her words dried up.

Mr. Pendyce had come back to the foot of the bed, and once more gripped
the rail whereon the candle, still and bright, showed them each other's
faces, very changed from the faces that they knew. In the Squire's lean
brown throat, between the parted points of his stiff collar, a string
seemed working. He stammered:

"You--you're talking like a madwoman! My father would have cut me off,
his father would have cut him off! By God! do you think I'll stand
quietly by and see it all played ducks and drakes with, and see that
woman here, and see her son, a--a bastard, or as bad as a bastard, in my
place? You don't know me!"

The last words came through his teeth like the growl of a dog. Mrs.
Pendyce made the crouching movement of one who gathers herself to spring.

"If you give him up, I shall go to him; I will never come back!"

The Squire's grip on the rail relaxed; in the light of the candle, still
and steady and bright--his jaw could be seen to fall. He snapped his
teeth together, and turning abruptly, said:

"Don't talk such rubbish!"

Then, taking the candle, he went into his dressing-room.

And at first his feelings were