“You young viper!” cried the father, stung with remorse, but not touched with penitence. “Get away, you amorous young hypocrite; get out of my house, get out of my sight, or I shall spurn you and curse you at my feet.”
“Enough!” said Alfred, rising and turning suddenly calm as a statue: “let us be gentlemen, if you please, even though we must be enemies. Good-bye, my father that was.”
And he walked gently out of the room, and, as he passed the window Mr. Hardie heard his great heart sob.
He wiped his forehead with his handkerchief. “A hard tussle,” thought he, “and with my own unnatural, ungrateful flesh and blood, but I have won it: he hasn't told the Dodds; he never will; and, if he did, who would believe him, or them?”
At dinner there was no Alfred; but after dinner a note to Jane informing her he had taken lodgings in the town, and requesting her to send his books and clothes in the evening. Jane handed the note to her father: and sighed deeply. Watching his face as he read it, she saw him turn rather pale, and look more furrowed than ever.
“Papa!” said she, “what does it all mean!”
“I am thinking.”
Then, after a long pause, he ground his teeth and said, “It means—War: War between my own son and me.”