was one of my own making. No remonstrance, no command would have
availed with me for a moment. I was determined to go my own way, and I
went."

It was curious to remark that the roughness and harshness of his first
manner had dropped away from him as it did drop now and then. He spoke
with the polished utterance of an educated man. It was almost as though
he at times put on a certain boorishness of demeanor, feeling it in some
way demanded of him by circumstances--but not natural to him after all.

"I will try not to vex you, Wyvis," said his mother, wistfully.

"You do not vex me exactly," he answered, "but you stir my old memories
too often. I want to forget the past. Why else did I come down here,
where I have never been since I was a child? where Juliet never set
foot, and where I have no association with that miserable passage in my
life?"

"Then why do you bring those men down, Wyvis? For _they_ know the past:
_they_ will recall old associations----"

"They amuse me. I cannot be without companions. I do not pretend to cut
myself off from the whole world."

As he spoke thus briefly and coldly, he stopped to strike a match, and
then lighted the wax candles that stood on the black sideboard. By this
act he meant perhaps to put a stop to the conversation of which he was
heartily tired. But Mrs. Brand, in the half-bewildered condition of mind
to which long anxiety and sorrow had reduced her, did not know the
virtue of silence, and did not possess the magic quality of tact.

"You might find companions down here," she said, pertinaciously, "people
suited to your position--old friends of your father's, perhaps----"

"Will they be so willing to make friends with my father's son?" Wyvis
burst out bitterly. Then, seeing from her white and stricken face that
he had hurt her, he came to her side and kissed her penitently. "Forgive
me, mother," he said, "if I say what you don't like. I've been hearing
about my father ever since I came to Beaminster two days ago. I have
heard nothing but what confirmed my previous idea about his character.
Even poor old Colwyn couldn't say any good of him. He went to the devil
as fast as ever he could go, and his son seems likely to follow in his
footsteps. That's the general opinion, and, by George, I think I shall
soon do something to justify it."

"You need not live as your father did, Wyvis," said his mother, whose
tears were flowing fast.

"If I don't, nobody will believe it," s