Ralph listened to this startling announcement with an impassive face. He hardened his heart against the man who had dealt harshly with him.
“I suppose it means,” he said, “that another of your Companies has failed and that this time you have suffered yourself, besides ruining hundreds as you ruined my father.”
“God knows how I regretted his losses,” said Sir Matthew and for the time there was a ring of genuine feeling in his voice. “It was for that reason I adopted you, that I educated you, that I took you straight to my own home. Have you forgotten that?”
“Sir, you never gave me a chance of forgetting it,” said Ralph bitterly, all his worst self called out by contact with this man whom he detested. “Had I listened to your temptation I should now have been pledged to become a money-grubbing priest, a trader in holy things, a disgrace to the church.”
He pulled himself up, recollecting that he was not much to boast of as it was—but a faulty, irritable mortal, full now of resentment, and hatred and contemptuous anger.
“Perhaps you were right,” said Sir Matthew with a sigh. “I admit that I was harsh with you that day, and you have a right to hit me now that I am down.”
Ralph instantly responded to this appeal as the astute Sir Matthew had calculated.
“Don’t let us speak of the past,” he said in an altered tone, “I owe you my education and I try to be grateful for that. Why did you wish to see me? What do you want with me?”
“We are almost at Southampton,” said Sir Matthew glancing at the lights of the town. “Let me come to your rooms with you and I will there explain matters. Is this St. Denys? They stop for tickets here I suppose; have the goodness to give mine to the collector.”
He moved to the further end of the carriage and began to unstrap some rugs from which he took a highland maud. He was still stooping over the straps when the tickets wore collected. Then as soon as they moved on once more he began to swathe himself elaborately in his tartan.