again--employing
the old argument, and in an angry, contemptuous tone that was entirely
unfilial. "I'd ha' married the girl in earnest, but for your threats to
disinherit me."

"You fool!" his father stormed at him, "did you suppose that if I should
disinherit you for marrying her, I should be likely to do less for your
luring her into a mock marriage? I've done with you! Go your ways for
a damned profligate--a scandal to the very name of gentleman. I've done
with you!"

And to that the earl adhered in spite of all that Rotherby and his
mother could urge. He stamped out of the library with a final command to
his son to quit his house and never disgrace it again by his presence.
Rotherby looked ruefully at his mother.

"He means it,"' said he. "He never loved me. He was never a father to
me."

"Were you ever greatly a son to him?" asked her ladyship.

"As much as he would ha' me be," he answered, his black face very
sullen. "Oh, 'sdeath! I am damnably used by him." He paced the chamber,
storming. "All this garboil about nothing!", he complained. "Was he
never young himself? And when all is said, there's no harm done. The
girl's been fetched home again."

"Pshaw! Ye're a fool, Rotherby--a fool, and there's an end on't," said
his mother. "I sometimes wonder which is the greater fool--you or your
father. And yet he can marvel that you are his son. What do ye think
would have happened if you had had your way with that bread-and-butter
miss? It had been matter enough to hang you."

"Pooh!" said the viscount, dropping into a chair and staring sullenly at
the carpet. Then sullenly he added: "His lordship would have been glad
on't--so some one would have been pleased. As it is--"

"As it is, ye'd better find the man Green who was at Maidstone, and stop
his mouth with guineas. He is aware of what passed."

"Bah! Green was there on other business." And he told her of the
suspicions the messenger entertained against Mr. Caryll.

It set her ladyship thinking. "Why," she said presently, "'twill be
that!"

"'Twill be what, ma'am?" asked Rotherby, looking up.

"Why, this fellow Caryll must ha' bubbled the messenger in spite of the
search he may have made. I found the popinjay here with your father, the
pair as thick as thieves--and your father with a paper in his hand as
fine as a cobweb. 'Sdeath! I'll be sworn he's a damned Jacobite."

Rotherby was on his feet in an instant. He remembered suddenly all that
he had ove