us."

The son, putting on a white glove, got back at it. "I was asking you
about Benny."

Again the old man shifted. "Hum! Well! Since you make a point of it.
Yes. I'll send him to Newport."

"You won't forget?"

"I never forget," replied the old man, who, from that moment, forgot it
utterly--until the following night when throttlingly it leaped at him.

Even if he had remembered, it could only have delayed the course of
events. Benny went the next day and, in going, merely accelerated a
drama which perhaps was preordered.

But now, from behind the recesses of the malachite stairway, a rascal
appeared and approached and opened a bronze door, from which a young
gentleman passed out and entered his car.

It was dark then, darker than convenient. There are ways that are
obscure. The martyr who discovered that virtue is its own reward, died
unwept, unhonoured, unsung. History does not know him. Perhaps he was an
editor. But he bequeathed a valid idea.

As the car swam on, Monty Paliser was conscious of it. It would, he
reflected, simplify matters very much if his father died immediately. He
had no ill-feeling toward him, no good-feeling, no feeling whatever. For
the property conveyed to him and otherwise bestowed, he had no
gratitude. These gifts were in the nature of things. Gifts similar or
cognate his father had received, as also had his grandfather, his
great-grandfather and so on ab initio. They were possessions handed down
and handed over for the greater glory of the House. He had therefore no
gratitude for them. When the time came he would repeat the process and
expect no gratitude either. Meanwhile though the gifts were adequate,
there were more en route, so many that they would lift him within
hailing distance of the richest men in the world. Though whether that
were worth five minutes of perplexity, ten minutes of tears, a row and,
possibly, your name in the papers, depended on the point of view.

In considering it, he found himself--and very much to his
disgust--rememorating a moral axiom: Great wealth is a great burden. The
axiom was a favourite with his father, who had sickened him with it. But
on its heels always there had trod a variant. "By Gad, sir, you can say
what you like, it puts you in a position to tell anybody to go to hell."

The variant had a lilt, a go, a flourish. To employ a vulgarism of the
hour, it had the punch. It landed you and between the eyes. It required
neither commentaries