“Harm!” repeated Mr Miles, startled. Then, as his son did not reply, he said, sighing, “I am thinking of poor Marion.”
“She can be married now as soon as she likes, I suppose,” said Anthony shortly, turning away and going into the house. He was not feeling much of that sweet sense of satisfaction which is held up to us as bringing a quick reward for our good actions: he had behaved more generously towards his cousin than ninety-nine men out of a hundred might have done, but his generosity did not tend to make him ignorant of this fact, and he had expected a certain reward which had not come. Mr Pitt’s manner had chilled him as much as Marmaduke’s. He would have resented the imputation that he was dependent upon external influences, yet there was a certain side of his character which seemed almost at their mercy, and a fortress is no stronger than its weakest point. If he made over the fortune to Marmaduke as an act of justice, it is certain that his mode of receiving it should have made no difference in Anthony’s determination; nevertheless, at this moment he half repented, and perhaps would have undone it if he could.
Mr Miles stood where his son had left him, looking sadly up the road along which Marmaduke had but now driven. Something, which was so indefinable that only a woman might have noticed it, seemed to have changed his face and his whole bearing ever since the day in which he had spoken to Marion in his study: the shadow of a shade had now and then, as it were, just touched him and passed, but during the last few days it had rested longer. He was conscious of it himself, yet it was so little beyond a vague something that he was inclined to smile at his own fancifulness. Rousing himself at last, although with another sigh, he went slowly down the steps and round to the front of the house, instead of going into the library, where there were papers and accounts to be looked over. Anthony was right. Marion might marry if she pleased, now that there was enough money to make things easy to them. And yet with the thought the shadow deepened.
For two days, however, he said nothing. But one evening when Anthony, who had cast off some of his vexation, was planning changes in the estate before it passed into the hands of tenants, his father remarked slowly,—
“I think I shall go home to-morrow. Something ails me, and I don’t know what it is. Perhaps your mother will find out.”
“Do you mean that you feel ill?” Anthony asked, looking up hastily.
“No, I don’t mean anything of the sort I have no more to say about it than just what I have said, so you need not alarm yourself. But I shall go, and you can either remain behind or run down again next week.”
“My mother will set you to rights, sir,” said Anthony cheerfully.
“Yes. And Marion. And Marion,” repeated the Vicar with a little absence of manner.
“I’ll go back with you, and come down again, as you suggest,” his son went on. “I should like to put two or three things straight before the place is let. There must be a clean sweep of a good deal.”