“Well, sir,” answered the latter, “I will e’en take your word for it—for that it is the word of as generous and self-sacrificing a soul as ever stood between a saint and a scamp.”
And with that they shook hands warmly and parted, Mr. Tuke going back to his lodgings in the “Adelphi,” where he had put up to be near his friends, who lay at the “Golden Cross” hard by.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Thus, at length, was Sir Robert the younger informed of the history of his inheritance. Thus, also, was it an aggravation of that wounding recital that, to all appearance, he might have earlier induced Mr. Creel to it—at a period when he himself was less bound to the conduct of a responsibility which he now knew he had undertaken upon terms that seemed to him unnecessarily humiliating, and which he could not but think he would surely otherwise have declined. For, if any love had dictated the gift—the new chance to a repentant prodigal—it was harder than Roman in its expression.
So he thought, smarting under the lash of his father’s prejudgment; and it was only by and by, in one of those elastic rebounds that were characteristic of the man and constitutional, that he came to consider that it was a prejudgment, and that, had his father lived to see it verified, he might have modified at least the asperity of his language.
This was little comfort; but it was some.
At first he had had a wild temptation to reject, at the eleventh hour, a gift which only his ignorance had accepted. It passed, however, in the reflection that, whatever the pre-history of “Delsrop” (with which he had no concern), the property was indubitably his at the present moment to do with as he chose; that he had already incurred, in his management of it, responsibilities that he could not with honour repudiate; and that the manliness to assert himself in the world should be altogether independent of adventitious moral support.
Still, he was something depressed and unhappy; and was become, perhaps, an essentially graver man than he had been before his interview with the lawyer.
This interview had taken place on the day after his arrival in London. On his way to it, he had left a message at the “Golden Cross,” conveying his respects and his hopes that the travellers had rested well. But the travellers themselves he had no intention to intrude himself on, until convinced, if possible, that the nature of his inheritance offered no bar to his suit with Miss Royston.
Satisfied on this point, he had desired and obtained Mr. Creel’s consent to his using his new knowledge, if necessary, for the furtherance of his addresses—but to how great a degree must be left to his own discretion.