“No,” he cried, “if you forget your duty to me, Aleck, I will not forget mine to you. I’ll not be angry, but quite cool. Now, sir,” he cried, with his face looking congested and his heavy grey brows drawn down over his glowing eyes, while his voice sounded hoarse and strange. “Aleck, tell me at once. I’ll have an answer before you leave this room. Why did you engage in that disgraceful fight?”
“I can’t tell you, uncle,” said the boy, in a hoarse whisper.
“Ha! That means, sir, that you are obstinately determined not to speak?”
“It isn’t obstinacy, uncle.”
“Don’t contradict me, sir. I say it is obstinacy. Now, once more, for the last time, will you answer my question?”
Aleck drew in a long, low, hissing breath and stood fast for a few moments, before saying, in a low tone, his voice quivering the while:
“I can’t tell you, uncle.”
There was a dead silence in the room for a few moments then; so dead was the silence, in fact, that if the proverbial pin had dropped it would have sounded loudly on the polished oaken boards.
Then the old man spoke, in a curiously suppressed tone of voice.
“Very well,” he said, huskily; “it is what was bound to come sooner or later. I see I have made another of the mistakes which have blasted my existence. I must have time to think out what I shall do. One thing is very evident—you have rebelled against my rule, Aleck, and are struggling to get away to think and act, sir, for yourself. I have done my best for you, but in my isolation I have doubtless been blind and narrow. It is the natural result of our solitary life here—the young spirit seeking to soar.”