Farnsworth had never been more keenly alive in every fibre of his being than at this moment. All his family pride, his refined tastes, his delicate nature, revolted from a kinship with the ugly, uncouth child who stood grinning maliciously upon his guilty parents. His impulse, almost too strong to be resisted, was to turn back and hide himself again in the world from which he had come,—to leave this woman and her loutish child in the quiet and obscurity in which he had found them. But he was nobler than his impulses and had paid already too dearly for rashness; the claim of a son upon the father who has brought him into the world grasped his sense of justice like a hand of steel.
He rose to his feet firm and determined.
“Go away now,” he said to the boy quietly, but in a voice which even the urchin felt admitted of no disobedience. “I wish to talk with your mother. I will see you to-morrow.”
“Yes, Farnsworth,” the mother said pleadingly. “Go to bed now. I will come to you before long. That’s a good boy.”
The boy slowly and unwillingly withdrew, his reluctance showing how rare obedience was to him, and the parents were once more alone.
“You have given him my name,” were Farnsworth’s first words, as the door closed behind his son.
“It was father who did that. He said he should remember to curse you every time the name was spoken.”
“And you?” the other asked, almost with a shudder.
“I did not care. Cursing could not change things. Only I would not let him do it before the boy. I didn’t want him to know what sort of a father he had.”
In the midst of his self-abasement some hidden fibre of resentment and wounded vanity tingled at her words; but he would not heed it.