“But,” he added, quickly; “don’t tell me anything that you might later regret telling, or anything very disagreeable if you can help it, for I confess you have been so satisfactory, so thoroughly all that I wanted my son to be, that I shrink from hearing anything to your detriment.”
“I don’t know that it is exactly to my detriment, for after all, I was thinking of a particular case to illustrate what I said a while ago, and I am pretty sure that most of the men I know wouldn’t think seriously of it for a moment; but I acknowledge that I have never felt satisfied with myself about it all.” He threw back his head and stared fixedly at the ceiling for a moment, and then burst out laughing.
“By Jove, sir! we are getting demonstrative,” he said. “Do you feel yourself equal to being a father confessor besides just an ordinary father?”
Judge Cahill smiled in a perfunctory way.
“If your conscience is in such a bad way as to need confessing, Dana, I shall be very glad to hear, although I, of course, cannot give you absolution.”
Cahill paused a moment.
“That’s so, sir,” he said, finally. “After all it is hardly worth while troubling you about such a small thing, and one that happened so long ago, and which is settled now, rightly or wrongly, forever.”
He stood up as if to say good-night, but the elder man did not rise and sat looking thoughtfully at the blaze with the uneasy, surprised look still on his face.
“It is not about business? nothing that affects your character for honesty and fair dealing?” he said at length, interrogatively.
“Oh, no!” replied Cahill, quickly.