"I will make him a rich man," said his father, "rich and prosperous. He shall have all his heart can desire; but I cannot acknowledge him as my son."
"Oh, father!" exclaimed Philip, "no money can undo the wrong you have done him. He has led the life of a brute, and is as ignorant as a brute. He has been browbeaten and trampled on all his life. They have made a slave of him, and money will do him no good. It is we who must lift him out of his misery, and care for him, and teach him all that a man of thirty can learn. Don't think of me. Surely I can bear this burden; I have no dread of being a poor man. But I could never forsake my brother. If he is your son, he is my brother, and I owe him a brother's duty."
"Your mother must know, then?" said Sidney in a tone of entreaty.
"Yes," he answered.
"It will break her heart!" exclaimed his father.
"My mother would rather have her heart broken than that any wrong should be done," replied Philip.
CHAPTER XXXV.
BEGINNING TO REAP.
Sidney found himself too unprepared for an immediate interview with Margaret to return with Philip to the hotel. He felt that he must be alone to realize the full meaning of his position. It was a matter almost of life and death to him. The country round was familiar to him, though it was thirty years since he had seen it, and he soon found a path which led him away to such a solitude as he sought. Busy as his brain was, he was at the same time intensely alive to all the impressions of nature. He felt the scorching heat of the sun, and saw the shapes of the lofty peaks surrounding him, and heard the humming of insects, and the trickling of little brooks down the mountain side. It was a magnificent day, he said to himself. Yet all the while his mind was plotting as to how he could arrest the storm that was beating against that fair edifice, which he had been building for himself and for Philip through so many years. It was a house without a foundation, built upon the sand, and he, the architect, was discovering too late that there was no foundation to it. But it must not be. If he could only bend Margaret to his will, convincing her reason—for she was a reasonable woman—he did not fear failure with Philip. It was so easy and so rational a thing to leave this man where he had been brought up, of course providing amply for him. It would be so difficult and so inexpedient to acknowledge him, and to place him in the position of heir to large estates. Surely Margaret would see how irrational, how impossible it was to deprive Philip of that which had been his birthright for so many years, in favor of one who was ignorant that he had any birthright at all, and who would be placed in a miserably false position if it was granted to him.
He argued the question over with himself till he was satisfied of the ground on which he based it. It was not for himself, but for their first-born son, he would plead. Surely she would keep this secret for Philip's sake if not for his.