“Oh, very well, sir, very well. You must go your own way. I shall not attempt to interfere. Only you will quite understand that neither you nor Phillis have anything more to look for from my hands.”
Mrs Thornton broke in appealingly. “My dear Peter! Now do not be so hasty. You know how sorry you often are when it is too late.”
“Will you hold your tongue?” said her husband, glaring at her.
“You don’t really mean it,” she went on disregarding, “you know you don’t. Jack has been about the place ever since we came here twelve years ago, and he was a nice little boy in a short jacket—”
“Will you be quiet?”
“No, I won’t. If nobody else is here to speak, I shall tell you what I think of it. There is nobody so near you as Jack. As to all this business, you know very well that it is no one’s fault but Phillis’s, she said so herself in her letters, and I do say it is a shame that the poor boy should suffer—”
Mr Thornton was in a red heat of passion. Jack said abruptly.
“No, that is not the case. Whatever blame there is—and I suppose there always is blame, first or last, in a broken engagement—rests entirely with me. It will be very unjust, Uncle Peter, if you visit my sins on poor Phillis. I tell you honestly that I liked the thought of Hetherton at first, I dare say I should like it still; but it was a mistake of yours, I think, though no doubt you meant it kindly, to mix up the two things together, and it makes it uncommonly hard upon one of the two, don’t you see? Set it right with Phillis, and I shall take my disinheriting without grumbling.”
Phillis was Mr Thornton’s favourite as Jack was his wife’s, and this speech of Jack’s smoothed him down a little. But he shook his head obstinately.
“Whatever I may be, I’m not a weather-cock. I made up my mind deliberately, and I’m not going to change it for any boy or girl fancies. Marry Phillis, and you and she and your heirs after you shall have Hetherton, and plenty to keep it on. Don’t marry her, and I shall find another successor. That’s all. You can’t have it more plainly.”