"Lives on her, I suppose," growled the other. "Scoundrel! I know the sort. The kind your Gladstones encourage."
He descanted at length and with more than even his usual violence on the sins of all governments and especially radical ones. Unlike his usual self, he was clearly talking as a screen to gain time, sheltering something behind a wall of words. Ned was always embarrassed in his father's presence; but for once Mr. Caspar seemed himself uneasy in the presence of this son who had been such a woeful disappointment to him.
After his political outburst, there was a prolonged pause.
Then Mr. Caspar leaned forward and kicked a cinder into its place.
"Pretty comfortable here?" he asked at last.
"Oh, I get along fuf—first-rate," answered the son.
"Three hundred a year's not much for a man in my position to allow his only son, I know," the other said gruffly.
It was a new and unexpected note. The young man, chivalrous to the roots of him, and heir to all the qualities of his mother's family, instantly answered his father's mute appeal.
"My dear fuf—father, it's a fortune," he said. "We—I live like a prince. And anyway, it's three hundred a year more than I deserve."
His father was silent.