"Why, sir, should you have a mind diseased? With few men can things be said to be more prosperous than with you. Surely this affair of Fanny's is not of such a nature as to make you feel that all things are bitter round you."
"It is not that."
"What then? I hope I have not been a cause of grief to you?"
"No, my boy;—no. It irks me sometimes to think that I should have trained you to ideas which you have taken up too violently. But it is not that."
"My mother—?"
"She has set her heart against me,—against you and Fanny. I feel that a division has been made between my two families. Why should my daughter be expelled from my own house? Why should I not be able to have you here, except as an enemy in the camp? Why am I to have that man take up arms against me, whom I have fed in idleness all his life?"
"I would not let him trouble my thoughts."
"When you are old and weak you will find it hard to banish thoughts that trouble you. As to going, where am I to go to?"
"Come to Hendon."
"And leave her here with him, so that all the world shall say that I am running away from my own wife? Hendon is your house now, and this is mine;—and here I must stay till my time has come."