"No, there has been no quarrel."
"Your engagement is at an end?"
"Yes."
"And is this the result of last night's vaunted pleasures?" asks he, keenly. "Have you snatched only pain and a sense of failure from its fleeting hours? And Eleanor, too,—she was pale at luncheon, and for once silent,—has she too found her coveted fruit rotten at its core? It is the universal law," says the old man, grimly, consoling himself with a pinch of snuff, taken with much deliberation from an exquisite Louis Quinze box that rests at his elbow, and leaning back languidly in his chair. "Life is made up of hopes false as the ignis-fatuus. When with the greatest sense of security and promise of enjoyment we raise and seek to drain the cup of pleasure, while yet we gaze with longing eyes upon its sparkling bubbles, and, stooping thirstily, suffer our expectant lips at length to touch it, lo! it is then, just as we have attained to the summit of our bliss, we find our sweetest draught has turned to ashes in our mouth."
He stops and drums softly on the table for a moment or two, while Marcia stands before him silently pondering.
"So Philip is already counting on my death," he goes on, meditatively, still softly tapping the table. "How securely he rests in the belief of his succession! His father's son could scarcely fail to be a spendthrift, and I will have—no—prodigal at Herst—to hew—and cut—and scatter. A goodly heritage, truly, as Buscarlet called it. Be satisfied, Marcia: your revenge is complete. Philip shall not inherit Herst."
"I do not seek revenge," says Marcia, unsteadily, now her wish is fulfilled and Philip hopelessly crushed, a cold, troubled faintness creeping round her heart. An awful sense of despair, a fruitless longing to recall her action, makes her tremble. "Only I could not bear to see you longer deceived,—you, after all the care—the trouble—you bestowed upon him. My conscience compelled me to tell you all."
"And you, Marcia,"—with an odd smile she is puzzled to explain,—"you have never deceived me, have you? All your pretty speeches and tender cares have been quite sincere?"
"Dear grandpapa, yes."
"You have not wished me dead, or spoken or thought evilly of the old tyrant at Herst, who has so often crossed and thwarted you?"