"You're a blank idiot!" snarled the old man; but a strained, almost frightened look was stretched in queer lines on his yellow face. He was thinking of Ena and of the newspapers. He could hear the dogs yapping round his feet.
"Young Peter Rolls breaks away from home. Earns his living with his own hands, not father's Hands. What he says about his principles"—or some such rot as that would certainly appear in big, black headlines just when Ena and her magnificent marchese were searching the columns for gush over the forthcoming marriage. It would spoil the girl's pleasure in her wedding.
Old Peter was furious with young Peter, but began angrily to realize that the matter was indeed serious. He desired to be violent, but fear of Ena dashed cold water on the fire of his rage. Against his will and against his nature he began to temporize, meaning later to revenge his present humiliation upon his son.
"Who the devil has been upsetting you with lies about the Hands?" he spluttered.
"
I'm afraid we must take for granted that what has 'upset' me isn't lies." Peter let his sadness show in face and voice. "I don't wonder you're surprised and perhaps angry at my coming to you and suddenly throwing out some sort of accusations, when year after year I've been receiving money from the Hands as meek as a lamb without a word or question. I don't defend myself for lack of interest in the past or for too much now. Maybe I'm to blame both ways. But please remember, Father, you said that unless I distrusted you, I was to stand aside. After that I was so anxious to prove I trusted you all right, that I hurried to promise before I'd stopped to think. Since then I've been made to think—furiously to think—and––"
"I was brought up to believe there was no excuse for breaking a promise," Peter senior cut him short severely. There was Petro's chance to score, and—right or wrong—he took it.
"Then things have changed since the days when you were being brought up," he said, with one of those straight, clear looks old Peter had always disliked as between son and father. "Because, you know you promised Ena you would give up going to the store except for important business meetings once or twice a year. And you haven't given it up. You go there nearly every night."
Peter senior physically quailed. His great secret was found out! No use to bluster. Somehow young Peter had got hold of the long-hidden truth. He was, in a way, at the fellow's mercy. If Petro chose to tell Ena this thing she would fancy that every one except the family knew how old Peter's grubbing habits had never been
shaken off; that with him once a shopkeeper, always a shopkeeper, and that behind her back people must be laughing at the difference between her aristocratic airs and her father's commonness.