Cuthbert rushed up to town at once in a white heat of indignation. He was only just in time to find Wyvis at his hotel, for he had taken his passage to America, and was going to start almost immediately. But there was time at least for a very energetic discussion between the two young men.
"If you think," said Cuthbert, hotly, "that I'm going to take your place, you are very much mistaken."
"It is not my place. It has been mine only by fraud."
"Not a bit of it. It is yours by my father's will. He knew the truth, and chose to take this course."
"Very unfair to you, Cuth," said Wyvis, a faint smile showing itself for the first time on his haggard face.
Cuthbert shrugged his shoulders. "My dear fellow, do you suppose it's any news to me that my father cared more for your little finger than for my whole body? He chose—practically—to disinherit me in your favor; and a very good thing it's been for me too. I should never have taken to Art if I had been a landed proprietor."
"I don't understand it," said Wyvis, meditatively. "One would have expected him to be jealous of his wife's family—and then you're a much better fellow than I am."
"That was the reason," said Cuthbert, sitting down and nursing his lame leg, after a characteristic fashion of his own "I was a meek child—a sickly lad who didn't get into mischief. I was afraid of horses, you may remember, and hated manly exercises of every kind. Now you were never so happy as when you were on a horse's back——"
"A strain inherited from my ploughman father, I suppose," said Wyvis, rather grimly.
"And you got into scrapes innumerable; for which he liked you all the better. And you—well you know, old boy, you were never a reproach to him, as the sight of me was!"