“Your eloquence is a loss to the bar, Cardozo.”
“So I have often been told”—with a hasty movement of his hand; “but it is not a question now of my eloquence, but of your future. Do you genuinely mean what you say? Do you intend to live here as your father’s sole companion?”
“I do,” replied the young man, answering his look with eyes full of indomitable fire.
Mr. Cardozo puffed away in solemn silence for some time, but there was a certain brisk cheerfulness in his air as he suddenly remarked—
“The major is going downhill rapidly, poor old chap! His health is bad; I see a great change in him. His mind will never recover. Of course that is not to be expected; you know that it runs in the family—it is hereditary.”
“What runs in the family? What is hereditary?” demanded the other, with a look full of pain and excitement.
“Insanity. He told Mércèdes, who told me, that his brother jumped overboard at sea, going home in charge of two keepers; and his father died in Richmond lunatic asylum.”
“Is—this—true?” Mark brought out the words in three quick gasps.
“You don’t mean to say that you never knew? Oh, I’m awfully vexed! I entirely forgot you were his son. You look so different, upon my word, as you stand there, that I cannot realize that he is anything to you.”
Jervis struggled to articulate again, but signally failed. With a shaking hand he tossed his cigarette over the parapet, and then walked away up the steps, and was instantly merged in the gloom of the entrance.