not forgive him that iniquity?"

"But he says you are a younger son."

"This last move," he said, with great passion, "has only been made in an
attempt to punish me, because I would not tell him that I was under a
world of obligations to him for simply declaring the truth as to my
birth. We cannot both be his eldest son."

"No, certainly, not both."

"At last he declared that I was his heir. If I did say hard words to
him, were they not justified?"

"Not to your father," said Miss Scarborough, shaking her head.

"That is your idea? How was I to abstain? Think what had been done to
me. Through my whole life he had deceived me, and had attempted to rob
me."

"But he says that he had intended to get the property for you."

"To get it! It was mine. According to what he said it was my own. He had
robbed me to give it to Mountjoy. Now he intends to rob me again in
order that Mountjoy may have it. He will leave such a kettle of fish
behind him, with all his manoeuvring, that neither of us will be the
better of Tretton."

Then he went to the squire. In spite of what had passed between him and
his aunt, he had thought deeply of his conduct to his father in the
past, and of the manner in which he would now carry himself. He was
aware that he had behaved,--not badly, for that he esteemed nothing,--but
most unwisely. When he had found himself to be the heir to Tretton he
had fancied himself to be almost the possessor, and had acted on the
instincts which on such a case would have been natural to him. To have
pardoned the man because he was his father, and then to have treated him
with insolent disdain, as some dying old man, almost entirely beneath
his notice, was what he felt the nature of the circumstances demanded.
And whether the story was true or false it would have been the same. He
had come at last to believe it to be true, and had therefore been the
more resolute; but, whether it were true or false, the old man had
struck his blow, and he must abide by it. Till the moment came in which
he had received that communication from Tretton, the idea had never
occurred to him that another disposition of the property might still be
within his father's power. But he had little known the old man's power,
or the fertility of his resources, or the extent of his malice. "After
what you have done you should cease to stay and disturb us," he had once
said, when his father had jokingly alluded to his own death. He had at
once rep