"You missed dining with your brother this evening. He was good enough to break bread at my table."
The young man took a cigarette from the lacquered bowl at his side and lighted it with the same deliberation his father had shown.
"Really? I didn't know you had another son."
"Thank God I haven't—but your mother had, and that precious sniveling grandmother of yours has another grandson. You might recall that when you chatter of melodrama—and wills. I believe her estate is not one you'd care to divide."
"What rot are you gibbering with those monkey airs of yours?"
"Delicate as ever in your raillery! Perhaps you think I'm drunk. Perhaps I am. But I dropped in on your grandmother this afternoon in time to prevent her clasping that nameless whelp to her breast. A lovely bit I spoiled, my merry-andrew!—tears and fondlings to-night, a codicil to-morrow. I'm none too sure there'd have been a codicil, though. Likelier a new will—'give, devise, and bequeath the sum of one dollar to my grandson Alden Teevan, who has already wheedled me out of more than was good for him, and the residue of my estate, both real and personal, to my beloved grandson, Gilbert Denham Ewing——'"
"Ewing! That chap Nell Laithe brought back with her—that rustic lout——"
"Have I won your attention, lad? Another item I chance to recall—permit me, since you've mentioned the lady's name—have you caught the look of her eye as it rests upon the creature—how it follows him, runs to him, hangs upon him with sweet tenacity? Have you felt the glow in her voice as she speaks to him? A woman of the world, young, tender, romantic, stormed by this Galahad of the hills, who first wins her solicitude by his helplessness, and then, before the lady quite knows it, coerces her whole being by sheer masculine dominance. Ah, you haven't read that—only enough of it to puzzle you, perhaps enrage you. You haven't your father's eyes. I read it all in three glances: one at him and two at her. Decidedly, you've not your father's eyes."
"Nor his love of many words. So that's the son of my mother, of the woman who failed to adore you after a brief but heroic effort?"
"Likewise, I dare say, the lover of a woman who will henceforth fail to appraise you at anything like your extraordinary worth. Such blind things they are, eh, my boy? She regards the two of you superficially, bien entendu, and hence to your prejudice. There's a likeness between you, the same cast of face, even a likeness of voice, and your noses are identical—the nose of that woman—but the differences are all in his favor. You have grace of a drawing-room sort, a certain boudoir polish of manner, but his face is fresher, kinder, quicker of sympathy, more compelling, and there's that out-of-doors look in his eye, the look of readiness and power. You know what that sort of strength means with the pretty animals."