"Think of what his conduct has been to me. And then you tell me that I am to own that I have been wrong! In what have I been wrong?"
"He is your father, and I suppose you have said hard words to him."
"Did I rebuke him because he had fraudulently kept me for so many years in the position of a younger son? Did I not forgive him that iniquity?"
"But he says you are a younger son."
"This last move," he said, with great passion, "has only been made in an attempt to punish me, because I would not tell him that I was under a world of obligations to him for simply declaring the truth as to my birth. We cannot both be his eldest son."
"No, certainly, not both."
"At last he declared that I was his heir. If I did say hard words to him, were they not justified?"
"Not to your father," said Miss Scarborough, shaking her head.
"That is your idea? How was I to abstain? Think what had been done to me. Through my whole life he had deceived me, and had attempted to rob me."
"But he says that he had intended to get the property for you."