"There;—I knew you had quarrelled."
"I deny it altogether. I have not quarrelled with Augustus Scarborough. He is welcome to his suspicions if he chooses to entertain them. I should have liked him better if he had not brought me down to Tretton, so as to extract from me whatever he can. I shall be more guarded in future in speaking of Mountjoy Scarborough; but to you I give my positive assurance, which I do not doubt you will believe, that I know nothing respecting him." An honest indignation gleamed in his eyes as he spoke; but still there were the signs of that vacillation about his mouth which Florence had been able to read, but not to interpret.
"Yes," said the squire, after a pause, "I believe you. You haven't that kind of ingenuity which enables a man to tell a lie and stick to it. I have. It's a very great gift if a man be enabled to restrain his appetite for lying." Harry could only smile when he heard the squire's confession. "Only think how I have lied about Mountjoy; and how successful my lies might have been, but for his own folly!"
"People do judge you a little harshly now," said Harry.
"What's the odd's? I care nothing for their judgment; I endeavored to do justice to my own child, and very nearly did it. I was very nearly successful in rectifying the gross injustice of the world. Why should a little delay in a ceremony in which he had no voice have robbed him of his possessions? I determined that he should have Tretton, and I determined also to make it up to Augustus by denying myself the use of my own wealth. Things have gone wrongly not by my own folly. I could not prevent the mad career which Mountjoy has run; but do you think that I am ashamed because the world knows what I have done? Do you suppose my death-bed will be embittered by the remembrance that I have been a liar? Not in the least. I have done the best I could for my two sons, and in doing it have denied myself many advantages. How many a man would have spent his money on himself, thinking nothing of his boys, and then have gone to his grave with all the dignity of a steady Christian father! Of the two men I prefer myself; but I know that I have been a liar."
What was Harry Annesley to say in answer to such an address as this? There was the man, stretched on his bed before him, haggard, unshaved, pale, and grizzly, with a fire in his eyes, but weakness in his voice,—bold, defiant, self-satisfied, and yet not selfish. He had lived through his life with the one strong resolution of setting the law at defiance in reference to the distribution of his property; but chiefly because he had thought the law to be unjust. Then, when the accident of his eldest son's extravagance had fallen upon him, he had endeavored to save his second son, and had thought, without the slightest remorse, of the loss which was to fall on the creditors. He had done all this in such a manner that, as far as Harry knew, the law could not touch him, though all the world was aware of his iniquity. And now he lay boasting of what he had done. It was necessary that Harry should say something as he rose from his seat, and he lamely expressed a wish that Mr. Scarborough might quickly recover. "No, my dear fellow," said the squire; "men do not recover when they are brought to such straits as I am in. Nor do I wish it. Were I to live, Augustus would feel the second injustice to be quite intolerable. His mind is lost in amazement at what I had contemplated. And he feels that the matter can only be set right between him and fortune by my dying at once. If he were to understand that I were to live ten years longer, I think that he would either commit a murder or lose his senses."
"But there is enough for both of you," said Harry.
"There is no such word in the language as enough. An estate can have but one owner, and Augustus is anxious to be owner here. I do not blame him in the least. Why should he desire to spare a father's rights when that father showed himself so willing to sacrifice his? Good-bye, Annesley; I am sorry you are going, for I like to have some honest fellow to talk to. You are not to suppose that because I have done this thing I am indifferent to what men shall say of me. I wish them to think me good, though I have chosen to run counter to the prejudices of the world."
Then Harry escaped from the room, and spent the remaining evening with Augustus Scarborough and Septimus Jones. The conversation was devoted chiefly to the partridges and horses; and was carried on by Septimus with severity toward Harry, and by Scarborough with an extreme civility which was the more galling of the two.