The earl looked uneasy.
“I did all that a man is ever expected to for an illegitimate half-brother,” said he evasively. “If I had been a Quixote I couldn’t have given up my title to you. The law would not allow it.”
“But you could have given up Llancader, as my father, when he was dying, told me you would do.”
The earl flushed a little.
“He should have made that provision by will if he wished it attended to. I could not be expected to dismember the property. I am not a rich man, as you know. For my position I’m a poor one. I never have a thousand pounds to spend as I choose.”
“Not when your wines and women have all been paid for, I dare say.”
“Why sneer? I never knew you cared for those things. You were always for books, books. And a studious man is supposed to be virtuous.”
“Why? Is every thought holy that is printed and bound up in morocco? Through your father’s dishonesty to my mother and yours to me, I have had to pass the best years of my life in revelry of the imagination only. And so I whetted an appetite for pleasure which I have only just begun to satisfy as yours is exhausted.”
The earl felt for the first time in his life an impulse of fear; there was something scarcely human, something ghoulish, in the face before him. The eyes seemed to shoot flames through the fire-smoke.
“I am getting tedious, my lord,” continued Goodhare, with mock respect, after a short pause, during which the two men watched each other warily. “Let us sum up the situation. Your father and mine, an unmarried man, deceived my mother, a country lawyer’s daughter, by a mock marriage. He took her away to North Wales, and kept her there in privacy, on goodness knows what wretched plea. I was their son—his eldest son. She knew who he was; she thought I was his heir. I was fourteen before, in that out-of-the-way place, we learnt that he had married a woman of his own rank. Then the truth came out. My mother was broken-hearted, and did not live through the year. I was brought up a gentleman and left a beggar. Then, with stupendous generosity you gave me office as librarian—to close my mouth. And all your favors you gave to Rees Pennant, whom for that reason I have ruined. And so I lived near enough to hear the vices condoned in you which in me would have been condemned; to see a beautiful girl repulse my honorable advances with as much horror as she did your dishonorable ones. And yet my mother was a better woman than yours, and I am the eldest son.”