“You had better not know,” he said.
“But—I must.”
“But—why? Have you gained anything by being too curious before? Didn’t I warn you to leave it alone—that there might be things it were better that you should not know? This is another of them. Leave it alone, I say. ‘Where ignorance is bliss,’ you know. Well, in this case it is, believe me.”
“That is impossible. What sort of ease of mind, let alone happiness, could ever travel my way again while every moment of my life was spent in the consciousness that I was keeping somebody else out of his rights?”
“His rights! Good Lord! His rights! Now, do you really mean to tell me that you would abdicate, would turn over all this”—with a sweep of the hand around—“to Butcher Ned—er—I mean Everard? Why, to begin with, it would kill your father.”
“No; because he could have no rights here—at least not in the sense we mean—during my father’s lifetime. After that, well—”
“After that—well, you would put him in here—would install him in possession. Good Lord! Wagram Wagram, I can only suppose you don’t know your—er—brother one little bit.”
“Not lately, of course. But that doesn’t touch the principle of the thing anyhow.”
“Not touch the principle of the thing, eh? Have you reflected what would be the result of putting Everard in possession here? No; of course, you haven’t. Well, then, you may take it from me that hell let loose would be a merry little joke compared with Hilversea six months after that sucking lamb had got his finger on it. I tell you it would be a by-word for—well, for everything that you, and all decent people, would rather it were not.”
“Have you some grudge against him?” said Wagram.