"This is the second time you have told me that today," said the young man, calmly, though the hot blood was fast rising; "allow me to inform you, governor, with all due respect, that henceforth I will attend to my own business, and will not trouble you to attend to it for me. If you had any just or tenable grounds for the proceedings you are about to institute, I would have nothing to say; but, begging your pardon, you have none whatever; it is simply a piece of dirty work with which I will have nothing to do."
"You ungrateful dog! This is your return for my care and forethought for you, is it? Do you retract every word which you have said, or I'll cut you off without a penny," and with a fearful oath he swung himself around in his chair with such violence as to overturn the small onyx table upon which the cigars were standing, shattering it to fragments.
The young man paused directly in front of his father. "I retract nothing," he said, quietly but firmly. "You are at liberty to follow the example of old Ralph Maxwell Mainwaring if you wish, but you may regret it later, as he did."
"And do you think Edith Thornton will marry a penniless beggar, a pauper? Or do you propose to live upon her fortune?"
"No; I will not touch a penny of her fortune," he replied, his cheek flushing; "and I am not quite a pauper, for I have the money left me by Uncle Tom years ago; and if Edith is the girl to be turned from me under the circumstances, why, the sooner I find it out the better."
"A paltry twenty thousand pounds! a fine fortune!" sneered his father, ignoring his last remark.
"Many a fortune has been made from a much smaller start; but it is useless to waste words further. You understand my position, and that is enough. Mr. Whitney," he continued, addressing the attorney, "according to the terms of Hugh Mainwaring's will, I, and not my father, am heir to the property, and therefore the one to contest the claim of Harold Mainwaring if it is contested at all. I wish to state to you here and now, distinctly, that I will not contest the case, nor will I authorize any one to do so for me; and now, gentlemen, I bid you both good-evening!" and he quietly left the room.
"Zounds!" exclaimed the elder man, as the door closed upon his son, "I didn't suppose the boy had so much spirit! I've often wished he and Isabel could change places, because she was so much more like myself and what I would like a son to be."
"He has the Mainwaring blood all right," replied the attorney, with more inward admiration for the young man than he dared to express.
"Not if he will throw away a fortune in this manner; it is probably some boyish whim, however and the young fool will look at it in a different light to-morrow."