“Does it?” he answered; “does it really? Well, say it may be held to imply, in general terms, a motto—Vive et vivas; or, to put it specifically, If you don’t interfere with me, I won’t interfere with you.”
“Ah! now you puzzle me entirely—as much, I confess, as the strangeness of your being down here, alone at eleven o’clock in the morning, puzzles me.”
“Why, that is easily explained,” he said. “I have just been walking with Lady Skene in that delightful bower—a little cold just now—called the Baby’s Garden, and I took this path upon leaving her, as being the shortest and the most private.”
“O! Why as the most private, may I ask?”
He leaned upon his stick, hat in hand, conning me with a smiling archness.
“Don’t you know? Don’t you know, indeed, my dear boy? But of course you do; or why should I be here?”
“That is for you to say.”
“You have inherited frankness, I see. I have always been a model of frankness myself. I am glad to hear you pay that debt to your inheritance, Richard.”
I was gathering, at last, something of his drift. He was feeling his way to my sense of filial duty. I could have struck my fist into his accursed dandy face. No doubt he had heard from Lady Skene the facts of that interview between us in her boudoir, and had assumed, as she had assumed, that the knowledge of my parentage was a revelation to me. Let him rejoice then, and scheme on that premise, and set the trap to his own damnation. It was for me now, with all that frenzy of hatred tingling at my finger-ends, to nurse his delusion for him, and play the double hypocritical part. I was surprised, even, at the resources of Machiavellianism I discovered in myself.
“Mr Dalston,” I said, “as you flatter me for candour, I will be as candid as you could wish. I am aware, as you imply, that you have been drawing upon Lady Skene for money, and I know the reason.”