"Well," said John Scott to himself, as soon as he was left alone, "if my father gives me nothing else, he is certainly disposed to give me my own way. Perhaps in time he may give me all my rights. If so, well. If not—I bide my time," he repeated.
At the appointed hour the guardian and ward met at the depot.
The duke placed the promised letter in the youth's hand, saw him into a first-class carriage, and there bade him good-by.
John Scott sped down into Sussex as fast as the express train could carry him, and the Duke of Hereward went back to Hereward House, much relieved by the departure of the youth, whose presence in London had seemed like an incubus upon him.
The deeply injured boy had departed; but—so also had the father's peace of mind, forever! Certainly he was now relieved of all fear of an unpleasant ecclaircissement; but he was not freed from remorse for the past, or from dread for the future.
He told the duchess that day at dinner that a ward had been left to his guardianship, that this ward was, in fact, the son of a near relation, and bore the family name, which made it the more incumbent upon him to accept the charge; and, finally, that he had sent the boy down to Dr. Simpson, at the Greencombe Vicarage, to read for the university.
The duchess was not in the least degree interested in the duke's ward, and rather wondered that he should have taken the trouble to tell her anything about him; but the duke did so to provide for the future contingency of an accidental meeting between the duchess and the boy, so that she might suppose him to be a blood relation, and thus understand the family likeness without the danger of suspecting a truth that could not be explained to her.
But the duke could not silence the voice of conscience and affection. The deeply-wronged boy whom he had sent away was his own first-born son—the son of his first marriage and of his only love; and he had wronged him beyond the power of man to help! He was the rightful heir of his title and estates, yet he could never inherit them; he had been delegalized by his father's own hasty, reckless and cruel act; and for no fault of the boy's own—before he was capable of committing any fault—before his birth—he was disinherited.
All this so worked upon the duke's conscience that he could not give his mind to his ordinary vocations.
But about this time, the duchess, through the death of a near relative, inherited a very large fortune, principally in money.