"I have said before, that from the hour this lady became your wife, the place of my sainted mother enshrined her. As I would have studied that mother's happiness, I gave myself and all that I possessed to her welfare and yours. My own tastes were simple, and I had no hopes. The larger portion of my income, you have always controlled."
"And always will command, or this woman's name shall become a by-word from Maine to Georgia!" exclaimed the General, resuming some control over his rage. "We comprehend each other now, and can talk plainly. You have learned some of my secrets, and shall know more. I have other debts of honor, and no ward's fortune to pay them with: her reputation or mine is at stake—one must save the other."
"I do not understand you, sir."
"You can very well comprehend that the contents of this precious book, will render anything like affection for Mrs. Harrington impossible to me. Indeed, the unhappy position in which your mother's death left me, not only penniless, but frightfully involved, enforced this second marriage. I can afford to forgive an outrage on affections that never existed. So while the lady's faithlessness does not affect my interests or my honor, I can endure it with self-complacency."
"I am shocked—astonished, sir, to hear you speak in this way!" said James, indignantly.
The old man smiled.
"You are a dreamer, sir, which I am not. Scenes and excitements are my abhorrence; we hold unpleasant relations toward each other. You are my step-son. The only child of my very distant cousin, a Harrington like myself, to whom, but for your birth, I was the direct heir. The property, a vast one, which might have been justly divided, fell to his widow, your mother, by will. I married the lady, thus, as any sensible man would have supposed, ensuring the inheritance which should have been mine, and which undoubtedly would have been mine, but the lady took it into her head to get jealous one fine day"——
"Stop, sir!" said James Harrington. "I guessed too well the cause of her death—the bitter sorrow which haunted my mother to her grave. She died a broken-hearted woman; do not take her name irreverently into your lips, or I shall forget myself."
"You are forgetting yourself, sir!" answered the General, waving his hand with gentle deprecation. "This is neither time nor place for heroics. I did but attempt to impress you with the fact, that your mother's unjust will had caused all this domestic turmoil. You took the property from me—I won the lady from you. Let us look upon the thing like sensible men, and make restitution."
"Restitution, sir! Restitution of a wasted life!"