"But why marry at all unless you're fond of somebody to be attached to?"
"Ah!"
"Why marry at all? I say. I ask the question knowing very well why you intended to do it."
"Then why do you ask?" he said, angrily.
"Because it is so difficult to talk of Harry to you. Of course I cannot help feeling that you have injured him."
"It is he that has injured me. It is he that has brought me to this condition. Don't you know that you've all been laughing at me down at the rectory since this affair of that terrible woman?" While he paused for an answer to his question Mrs. Annesley sat silent. "You know it is true. He and that man whom Molly means to marry, and the other girls, and their father and you, have all been laughing at me."
"I have never laughed."
"But the others?" And again he waited for a reply. But the no reply which came did as well as any other answer. There was the fact that he had been ridiculed by the very young man whom it was intended that he should support by his liberality. It was impossible to tell him that a man who had made himself so absurd must expect to be laughed at by his juniors. There was running through his mind an idea that very much was due to him from Harry; but there was also an idea that something too was due from him. There was present, even to him, a noble feeling that he should bear all the ignominy with which he was treated, and still be generous. But he had sworn to himself, and had sworn to Matthew, that he would never forgive his nephew. "Of course you all wish me to be out of the way?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because it is true. How happy you would all be if I were dead, and Harry were living here in my place."