, for anything he knew; or, what was worse, he
might have got home and told his story. And the sting was that he had a
story to tell.

Warrender knew that he had done what he ought not to have done. He had
treated the child with a violence which he knew to be unmanly. He had
thrown him down, and stunned, and might have killed him. He did not deny
to himself what he had done. He would not deny it to her,--and he fully
expected that she would meet him with upbraidings, with anger. With
anger! when it was he who was the injured person,--he, her husband,
whose privacy was constantly disturbed and all his rights invaded
by her son. He turned this over and over in his mind, adding to the
accumulation of his wrongs, till they mounted to a height which was
beyond bearing. The fire blazed higher and higher as he kept on throwing
in fuel to the flames. It must come to some decision, he said to himself.
It was contrary not only to his happiness, but to his dignity, his just
position, to let it go on, to be tormented perpetually by this little
Mordecai at the gate, this child who was made of more importance than he
was, who had to be thought of, and have his wishes consulted, and the
supposed necessities of his delicate health made so much of. Geoff's
generosities, the constant sacrifices of which he was conscious, were
all lost upon his stepfather. He knew nothing of the restraint the child
put on himself, or of the wistful pain with which Lady Markland looked
on, divining more than she knew. All that was a sealed book to Theo. From
his side of the question Geoff was an offence on every point. Why should
he be called upon to endure that interloper always in sight,--never
to feel master in his own house? To be sure, Markland was not his
house, but Geoff's; but that was only a grievance the more, for he had
not wished to live in Markland, while his own house stood ready for his
own family, with plenty of room for his wife and children. There grew
upon Warrender's mind a great resolution, or, rather, there started up
in his thoughts, like the prophet's gourd, a determination, that this
unendurable condition of affairs should exist no longer. Why should he
be bound to Geoff, in whose presence he felt he was not capable of doing
himself justice, who turned him the wrong way invariably, and made him
look like a hot-tempered fool, which he was not? No, he would not endure
it longer. Frances must be brought to see that for the sake of her